


Very Nearly Perfect

by Cards_Slash



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-02-27 17:41:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 34,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2701595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Altair liked his neighbor from the moment the man moved in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> not going to lie, if you follow me on tumblr this is the story in which someone's monstrous penis creates problems in an otherwise ideal situation. the addition of children and fluff surprises even me.

The house next door had been empty since Sef turned nine the year before. The previous owners—an elderly woman and her sixteen cats, one small dog and four birds—had not exactly been evicted but some small squadron of younger family had come along and forcibly removed her (and her horde of animals). Sef had stood on the front porch for the whole duration of the ordeal, his small-slim face caught in white-spotted horror as the woman cried hysterically about Paris. (Is Paris her cat, Dad? Sef asked him. And Altair had been stuck on the porch trying to figure out the best way to explain that Mrs. Grabble that had lived next door Sef’s whole life had started losing track of things. It hadn’t been the best conversation, but far from the worst.) 

In the first months, when the prospective buyers were still plentiful and interest was high, Sef had sat on the front porch swing with a litter of books at his side and his eyes like hawk-eyes trying to figure out who was going to buy the place. 

“Why do you care so much?” Darim had demanded in spring when the grass had to be mowed and the flower beds had to be tended. Darim was fourteen-and-foolish (possessed of all the base needs of a boy on the verge of manhood) but he needed nothing so much as he needed an excuse to anger his baby brother. “Maybe nobody will buy it, who cares?”

“Shut up,” Sef said. He cared-because-he-did. The house deserved to have someone to live in it. 

Altair took up sitting next to Sef in the summer, didn’t read books but sometimes the newspaper and made lists about things that he needed to get done. (Always lists, so many lists, lists of lists that needed listing, the never ending obligation of fatherhood.) 

“Someone’s going to move in, Dad,” Sef told him one evening when the fireflies were out looking for lovers and the street had gone quiet save for the occasional car. He was yawning-and-tired, already in his pajamas with another half-finished book laying in his lap with his finger like a bookmark holding his place. 

“Sure,” Altair agreed. 

At some point, Sef had started planting flowers in the long-abandoned flower bed around the tree in the empty houses’ front yard. And he’d convinced Darim (through cunning, threats or bribes) to mow the grass. Altair knew and said nothing. 

Fall came with bitter wind and drove away most of the lingering interest in the house. School dragged Sef away from his sentry position on the front porch but he came home every day with wide-wide-eyes looking for a ‘Sold’ sign and found a persistently ‘For Sale’ in its place. 

“Why won’t anyone buy it?” Sef demanded in the winter when the cold had moved him from the front porch to a window seat. It was a curious obsession for a boy his age to have and Darim liked to give Altair long-looks of ‘aren’t you going to fix this’ when he thought Sef wasn’t looking. 

“It probably smells like cat box,” Darim said. “You saw how many animals they took out of that place.” It dissolved into a petty argument between them (much the same as it always did) before Altair waved his hand to silence them all and they ate dinner in unhappy quiet.

It was spring again, just after Sef turned ten and was on the verge of giving up looking out for the house, when the house finally found someone to live in it.

The new neighbors came on a Friday morning when the sky ripped open and poured. Altair was out on the porch (he’d promised Sef he’d keep a look out for the neighbors while he was at school) when the moving van pulled up. It was a short truck, one of those rent-me things, that the (obviously inexperienced) driver parked at the curb with a shuddering groan. The driver’s side door opened and a man walked around the front of the truck to pull open the passenger side and after a long moment of struggle freed a toddler wearing a big yellow raincoat. 

Altair watched them walk up the modest slope of the front yard, the toddler squinting out from under the wide-round hood framing his (her? Far too young to tell with any authority) face and holding a sippy cup out to the side to collect rain drops. The man set the child down on the porch and gently nudged him until his back was against the house. After a brief struggle with the keys, the front door opened. 

Altair sipped his tea and weighed the merits of offering his help. If his sons had been there, he would have sent them to help because humility and good-will were important things that neither of them possessed in any quantity. It was just that the rain was thick and constant and Altair’s tea was hot and delicious. But the toddler on the porch toddled forward and leaned through the wide open gaps in the railing and got his head soaked in the hard sheet of water that overflowed from the clogged gutters. His squealing objection and the haphazard way his small arms went out to the side ineffectively to save himself (while amusing at some distance) seemed to be his conscience exerting control over the physical world.

 _Help the man_ his conscience said. _Don’t you wish someone had helped you?_. 

So he put his tea down and took his jacket off, threw it back on the swing and headed out into the chill of the rain, across his yard and driveway, into the swampy-wet yard of his new neighbor and stood politely at the bottom of the steps looking up at the man (young man even) extracting this child from the porch railing. “I’m Altair,” he said with (his best attempt at) a smile, “I live there. Want help?”

The (young) man set the (boy? Had to be a boy) down by the door and pushed him inward toward the darkened interior of the house while he thought over the offer. He had taken off the slick black jacket he was wearing when he walked up to the house and that left him with a white-shirt with indistinct gray lettering (already wet on the shoulders). His black hair was soaked to his head already and while his pride clearly wanted to tell Altair to leave him the hell alone, his toddler (already walking straight back into the rain) defeated him. “I’m Malik,” he said as he grabbed the child by the arm to keep him out of the rain. “This is Tazim.” Then, “the forecast said there was a five percent chance of rain today.”

Altair looked up and squinted into the fat drops of rain that were thick enough to drown a man and then back at Malik. “Looks like they were a little wrong. When do you have to return the truck? My oldest son should be home in about an hour and a half if you can wait that long we’d have three times the arms and the rain might stop.”

“I have it all day,” Malik said. But he was far from ready to commit to accepting help.

“You could come to my house, it’s warm, dry, has food and furniture,” Altair said. He nodded at the boy who had slipped his father’s grasp (again) and was crouching at the top of the stairs banging his cup against the puddles. “I’ve been where you are, I didn’t want anyone helping either. I get it, no pressure, but the offer is there if you want it.”

Malik looked at the pitiful emptiness of the house then at his son as Tazim tipped his head and let the gray runoff from the gutters run across his face and into his gaping-open mouth. There was a high-whistle of pronounced misery. “Yeah, that sounds better than this.” Malik said. He ducked forward to get his son and straightened up again while the boy wailed in objection to being saved from certain death by gutter-water. 

\--

By the time Malik reached his awkward-neighbor’s equally small house the rain had soaked through his jeans and left him a shivering mess of limbs. Tazim didn’t seem to notice or care how hard it was raining because he only barely stood obediently while Malik stripped off his jacket and shoes (to keep from sullying the pristine cleanliness of this stranger’s house). Then he was running for his life, ducking straight out of the small open area with the plastic bins for shoes and hooks for jackets to the nearest furniture. He flung himself onto the couch and made himself right at home.

“How old?” Altair asked from the side. He had taken his shirt off on the porch and was wringing it out by twisting it and stretching it as far as he could manage. His pants—something sturdy and serviceable but not jeans—were soaked through and sticking to his thighs. Malik was only dimly aware that he was staring at his neighbor’s naked belly for a half-breath too long. “You don’t have to worry about making a mess,” Altair said. To prove this point he chucked his shirt into one of the shoe buckets and stooped to untie his boots. 

“He’s sixteen months,” Malik said finally. 

“You just get him?” Altair stepped out of his boots, left them out on the porch and peeled his socks off to drop them where they landed. Then he ducked in through the small space that Malik left for him to scoot through (staring, dumb-founded, stupidly). “Can he watch TV? I’ve got a couple of cartoon channels.”

“Yeah,” Malik said. He was glad (at least) for the reprieve of not being confronted with Altair’s well-defined abs or the way the veins on his arms stood out under his skin just enough to draw attention. He shook his head and made a point not to look at his back. Instead he pulled his own (outer) shirt off and put it on the porch over a plastic chair and kicked his shoes off next to Altair’s. “No, I’ve had him since birth,” Malik said. “Just, this is our first attempt at living independently. My parents don’t think I’ll make it.” He ran his hand through his hair and a whole waterfall slid down the back of his neck. 

Altair was looking-over-his-shoulder at him with a half-grin. “I have been there,” he said. He motioned at the picture on the wall by the door. “My boys. Their Mom moved away when the little one was six months, the older one was…” He took a second to think it over as he grabbed a blanket off a chair and threw it over Tazim who accepted it with some sort of gratitude. “Five.”

“I can’t imagine having two of them,” Malik said. Then, standing just inside of the closed door with water sticking his jeans to his legs and his undershirt soaked to his skin in such a way that he might as well been naked, he simply ran out of things to say. 

Altair (an indefinable number of years older than him) seemed to realize it and motioned toward the room just beyond the living room. “Thirsty?”

No. Malik followed him, though, and accepted a seat on one of the old wooden chairs around the dining room table that afforded him a good view of his son and the rented truck he’d managed to park by the curb. The rain, not content to be just a soaking, cold affair, started howling with a driving wind. “I sincerely hope this is not an omen.”

Altair made a vague noise of amusement from the side. He was drinking a glass of water, carrying a fresh shirt (thankfully) but he ducked low enough to see the sheets of rain as they made a swamp out of the front yard. “It looks grim,” he said agreeably. “Could have been worse, though. You could have moved in while the shrew across the street was weeding her garden. Her husband was a detective and she thinks that everyone the street is most likely a criminal of one kind or another.”

“Why?”

“I imagine she just doesn’t have anything better to do since he died. She tried to convince me that Darim—my oldest—was dealing drugs last year. She’s a pest.” He set his glass down and pulled his shirt on. That much was a relief, not having to focus on not looking at him. Altair picked his glass up again to take another drink once he had straightened the shirt on his chest. “How old are you?” 

“Twenty two,” Malik said. Or, as his mother frequently wailed, ‘just a baby! You’re a baby, just a baby!’ Malik was not under the same mistaken notion that he was an infant (having had been responsible for the primary care of an infant now) but she couldn’t be convinced he was an adult. 

“Twenty two?” Altair repeated, “you bought a house at twenty two?”

Malik shrugged, looked at the truck in the rain. Tazim had gotten bored at a commercial and wandered over to look out the window with him. His tiny fingers against the damp glass and his nose and mouth pressed full against it with wide-open amazement. “As if buying a house is a stupid investment just because I’m young. If I don’t like this house, I can sell it and find another. Or I can rent it out and find another house.”

“Yeah I don’t care about that,” Altair said. His hand was waving somewhere in the air. He finally pulled a chair out to sit down. “You have a job that pays well enough to buy a house at twenty two, that’s the sort of secret I wished someone had imparted on me.”

Oh. Malik smiled (all nerves) and pulled Tazim away from the window before he could start licking it. “Uh, my family owns some stores. I work in the finance department. I was kind of specifically raised to work in the finance department.”

“I bet that made you popular with the ladies.” Altair looked at the clock hanging over the open doorway into the kitchen. He frowned at it as if it were annoying to him for just existing and then looked at Tazim as he crawled into Malik’s lap and tried to get up onto the table to mess with the salt and pepper shakers sitting in the middle. “I remember that age. You feel like it’s never going to end and then the next day they’re walking around shirtless to show off their chest hair.” 

Malik laughed and Altair smiled.

\--

Darim returned from his (half) day of school soaked to the bone with a foul frown on his face and wet stomp of socks across carpet. He was mouth-open complaining about his bus driver and the arbitrary laws of bus stops when he came to a full stand-still just to the side of the table. He didn’t look at Malik (clearly the least interesting thing to see) but at Tazim who was sitting on a stack of books eating (or doing a credible imitation of it) macaroni and cheese by the fistful. His fluffy dark hair had dried into curls and his precious baby’s smile trained itself on Darim with all the sparkle of love at first sight. 

“Malik, this is my son Darim. Darim this is Malik and Tazim.” 

Darim smiled politely enough but the first thing he said was, “oh _man_. You’re going to make me help.” Then he was hands-in-the-air pushing his way into the kitchen complaining about rain and needing something to eat. At fifteen, the boy was nearly as tall as Altair but not as compact. His body was shaped in much the same way that Maria’s father had been shaped, all puffed out in the chest with a healthy bulk to his arms and legs that made him look like a full-sized person and not the skin-and-bones slimness that Sef had inherited. 

“It’ll go faster with more people helping,” Altair said.

“That must be why you were nice enough to wait for me,” Darim said. He was frowning as he ate the leftovers out of the pan with a spoon. When the pan was scraped clean he went to get his shoes and jacket back on. 

“He’s excited to help,” Altair said to Malik who had endured this scene with nonjudgmental silence. “Shall we?” 

The three of them were back out in the rain with Tazim unhappily caged into his new house (courtesy of the baby gate Altair had found in a closet). The moving van, while not the largest possible size, was stuff full of more things that anyone might have guessed could fit into such a compact space. Darim (mouthy and unpleasant) had been raised to work fast and wordlessly. He took to the task of carting boxes and bags and furniture up to the porch without delay. Malik was given the task of moving things over the gate and dropping them into the empty interior of his home. Altair carried the breakable and heavy things that Darim worked around. 

“I don’t feel like I’m doing enough,” Malik said when Altair handed him the pieces of a crib over the baby gate. Tazim was still screaming his displeasure while he shook the gate holding him in place. 

“You’re doing the lion’s share,” Altair assured him. 

Sef trailed in about the time Darim was standing (dripping wet) in the interior of the van going: “Dad, we have to move the stupid mattresses before we can get the rest of the boxes out. And this couch?” he motioned at it like it offended him on a spiritual level. “It weighs like six hundred pounds. And it’s ugly.”

“Someone moved in?” Sef asked. He was wearing his rain jacket (the smarter brother, certainly) with a gleeful grin on his face. He pulled himself up into the van to join them in appraising what was left to move. “Who is it? Do they have kids?”

“It’s a guy,” Darim said. “Dad wants to bone him.”

Altair slapped Darim on the arm. “Don’t talk like that.”

“It’s true,” Darim said back defiantly. He looked right at Sef’s confused half-smile. “It’s a guy and a baby. And Dad made them lunch and now we have to move all this crap just because..” But he looked back at Altair before he finished the sentence and settled for making a random motion with his hand. “Sef can watch the kid. Sef likes kids.”

Altair rubbed his hands through his wet hair and reached over to grab another box (marked kitchen) to shove into Darim’s unhappy arms. “Take this up there. Try not to embarrass yourself while you do it.”

Sef picked up a sack and went over to scoot off the wet edge of the van to the ground. He lugged it up to the house and stopped just in front of Malik to introduce himself as the (nicer, smarter, sweeter, generally more polite) younger brother. If he invited himself to baby-sit the shrieking terror while Malik assisted Altair with the heaviest furniture, he must have done it with the single most sincere face ever because Malik smiled and motioned him inside. 

Then Malik was crossing the swampy front yard to where Altair was standing just out of the rain at the end of the van. “That is your kid, right? He looked like you.”

“Yes,” Altair said. Then they turned their attention back to the problem at hand, the mattress and box spring, the extraneous boxes that were lodged behind them, the couch (that weighed six hundred pounds) and the three chairs that were stacked up the ceiling in the corner. “I have a tarp,” Altair said.

Darim, who had been halfway to getting in the van and out of the rain at that exact moment, let out an unholy groan and dropped back to the ground again. He went without protest to the shed in the backyard to dig the tarp out and returned with it. His face was just murderous with bad attitude but his face was breaking out in those pink spots that preceded seasonal colds and weeks of misery.

“Go take a shower and find something for lunch,” Altair said when he took the tarp. “For you _and_ Sef.”

Darim was so grateful to be relieved of duty that he did not even protest having to cater to his baby brother. He ran to their house and stripped out of his sopping wet clothes on the porch, leaving even his pants behind in a puddle before he went in and slammed the door. 

Malik was making that neutral face that most people who witnessed Darim at his worst made. It didn’t last very long because they were carrying heavy-as-hell furniture through the rain and trying to wedge it in a front door and over a baby gate. 

“Dad,” Sef said when they were standing outside of the front door with the couch and no ideas about how to get it in, “move the gate. I’ve got Tazim. We found some of his toys.” And that was one of (but certainly not the only reason) that Altair loved Sef. 

They managed to get the stupid couch in after a few tries and were sitting on it cock-eyed in the wide-open doorway of the living room watching Sef and Tazim shoot cars through the obstacle course made out of boxes. Malik was soaked through again, his shirt tight to his skin as his nipples stood out from the chill and his legs sprawled open as he slouched in exhaustion. “I have no idea how I thought I was going to do this by myself,” he said eventually.

“Neither do I,” Altair said. He was cold and wet and on the verge of overstaying his welcome. “And you’re not even finished.” So he picked himself up (so much for a day off) and went out to get the last of the boxes and chairs and the broom that had been hiding under the couch.

“Thank you,” Malik said when the van was empty and the rain was finally reaching a breaking point. “Tell Darim thank you for me?”

“I will.” Altair was at least two inches taller than Malik and it hadn’t made much difference before but it seemed important with the way Malik was leaning against his own doorframe and looking up at him. The scruff on his cheeks was a dark shadow down to his jaw but the dark patch on his chin was clearly purposeful (and somehow attractive). Every single part of him was soaked through, and his hair looked silly flattened to his forehead. It made him look even younger than he was (and wasn’t that a sobering thought). Altair stopped himself from leaning toward Malik and cleared his throat to call Sef. “Well, you know where we are if you need anything.”

Sef was carrying his book bag in one hand with his jacket hanging off his head by the hood. “Dad fixes things,” he said. “Don’t you Dad? He used to be an electrician but now he’s a contractor—he can fix anything.”

Altair smiled and shoved Sef out into the rain. “See you, Malik,” he said.

Malik nodded and turned around to look at the disaster that was his house filled with soggy boxes. 

\--

Malik made it through returning the truck, picking up his own car, stopping off at a grocery store to get actual food and all the way home before Tazim’s lack of napping became a tornado of hyper screaming and running. It seemed like a fitting end to the whole day. 

The rain that had slowed down in the early afternoon was back to monsoon proportions by the time he finished carrying the groceries in. He fed Tazim slices of lunch meat and cheese and mandarin oranges (out of a can) whenever the boy came close enough to the side table where Malik had set his own plate. Then it was dropping the kid in a tub of warm water and letting him get drowsy before putting him in the first piece of clothing he’d found in the bags of their clothes. Tazim slept on the crib mattress next to the couch (that Malik slept on) that was sitting cock-eyed in the doorway. 

The alarm on his phone woke him up in the morning to discover Tazim was missing (in the kitchen, sitting on the floor with an open container of yogurt that also worked as finger paint) and that the rain had stopped. 

Kadar came over around ten to help him unpack. “Mom is still crying,” he said from the bathroom where he was helpfully stuffing towels into the linen closet. Tazim was sitting on the toilet (or he had been) watching. Malik was in the middle sized bedroom putting the crib together because it had taken half an hour and a roll of paper towels to get that stupid yogurt all cleaned up. 

“More or less than she cried when she found out I was having a baby?” Malik shouted back. He tightened the screws on the crib and straightened up to find that the window he was standing next to afforded him a shockingly nice view of Altair’s backyard. Where Altair was currently standing on the square of a back step drinking some kind of hot beverage with his shirt off. 

“About the sa—what are you looking at?” Kadar asked. He was carrying Tazim in one arm and a two bags of the kid’s clothes in the other. He snuck over (unnecessarily) to look out the window with Malik and as soon as he realized they were looking at Malik’s brand new half-naked neighbor scoffed loudly in his direction. “You are ridiculous, sir.”

“Shut up, he’ll hear you,” Malik hissed at him. 

“Hear you staring at him?” Kadar shouted. But Altair turned his head toward the sound and Kadar ducked out of the way so fast he nearly fell over and took Tazim with him. Malik just took a step backward and glared at his brother. Kadar was laughing. “Maybe curtains should be next.”

“Maybe dismembering your stupid body should be next,” Malik said.

Kadar inched back up to the window. “But he’s old. I mean, he’s a good looking guy but he’s old. Is that his kid?” Tazim was poking the window with one sticky finger. “How old is that kid?”

Malik stood next to his brother (like an idiot) and shrugged. “I don’t know, fourteen? Fifteen?”

“I’m seventeen,” Kadar said flatly. “That man is old enough to be my father. That means he’s too old for you. Stop looking at him, gerontophile.” Then he set Tazim down so he could throw the bags he’d brought with him into the closet where the dresser was sitting in pieces. “I’m serious. Stop. It’s getting disgusting.” 

And when Malik didn’t manage to stop looking at Altair (who was just talking to his sour-faced son) Kadar slapped one hand against the window and said, “stop staring at him or I’ll open the window and invite him over for sex and biscuits.”

“I hate you,” Malik said. 

Kadar just grinned. “I’m going to put the kitchen together. Where are those drawer things that Mom gave you? I promised I’d make sure they got put on.”

“In one of the kitchen boxes,” Malik said.

By naptime, Malik had put Tazim’s bedroom together (by far the most important room in the house) and the boy snoozed peacefully in his crib listening to his lullabies. Malik and Kadar put the living room together (rug, couch, tables, chair) and sat in the peaceful quiet lamenting the loss of a TV. “Altair has a nice TV,” Malik said. He was sipping tea, slouching into the couch looking at the empty space where the TV would go whenever he got around to getting one. 

“I should ask his kid out on a date. Would that be weird?” Kadar said. “You know since he’s only fifteen and I’m seventeen? No wait—you know what’s weird?”

“Shut up,” Malik said. “I can think he’s attractive without having to have sex with him, Kadar.”

Kadar snorted at that notion. “I give you four weeks and if you haven’t had sex with him, I’ll…paint your kitchen.”

“Four weeks?” Malik said, “you think so highly of me. Fine, deal.”

“Fine,” Kadar said. Then he sighed again and moved around on the couch. “Mom really was crying though. I wasn’t going to come help but she shoved me out the door _while crying_ and demanded I help you since you were stupid and stubborn and set on this foolishness.” 

“I can’t believe I missed that,” Malik mumbled. “We should finish the kitchen.”

“We should put your bed together.”

“I can sleep on the couch.”

“But can you put the bed together by yourself?” Kadar asked. “You couldn’t put it together by yourself last time.”

“Well if I can’t, my neighbor is a contractor. I’ve been told he can fix anything.”

Kadar made a fake gagging sound before he got to his feet. “But can he paint kitchens, that’s what we need to know.” He was already padding back through the dining room to get to the kitchen.

\--

Altair did not hide on the back porch. If it was the last place that his sons looked for him (no matter how often he was found there) that was not his primary intention. The front yard faced the street (and his bitch neighbor) which meant standing around half-asleep with his shirt off was slightly less acceptable. It was his backyard though, shaded on three sides by an overgrowth of bushes that needed to be trimmed. He considered making Darim doing it, weighed that against the knowledge that the boy would make a disaster of it just to spite him, and arrived at no conclusion.

Muffled shouting drew his attention away from the hedges, back across the chain-link fence that separated him from Malik’s yard. The sound seemed to be coming from a window near the back and there was a sudden flutter of movement behind the sun-glare on the window. Darim shoved the back door open with a huff and a sniffle (so running through the rain had not been a great idea).

“What are you doing out here?” Darim asked.

“Hiding,” Altair said.

Darim frowned at him. His nose was pink around the edges and his eyes had that decidedly weak look to them that meant he was going to get a cold. “Are you working today? You said yesterday you weren’t sure and I need to know because I was going to invite my friends over.”

“You can’t have friends over when I’m not here,” Altair said. It was a practical policy to have considering Darim came into existence during an unsupervised afternoon of impractical laziness. The poor kid had never stood a chance at attaining the sexual ignorance that caused his own existence because Altair had no desire to be a grandfather before he was thirty-five. 

“Which is why I need to know,” Darim said ve-rrrr-y-sl-ooo-wly. His attention was drawn away from Altair but a rattle at the neighbor’s window and his sour little expression deepened as he sighed. “The neighbor is staring at you, put a shirt on.”

Altair smiled.

Darim shook his head in distaste. “Gross. Are you working?”

“I have a consultation,” he said. “I’ll be back around two. If those hedges are trimmed down to fence level and your brother is still in one piece when I get back, you can invite your friends over.” 

Darim took this offer with all the grace a fifteen year old boy was capable of having. He scoffed, threw his arms around in objection and began complaining immediately about the _hours_ of his life and Sef _never had to_ and stomped his way back into the house to hide in his room. 

Altair took a sip of his coffee and thought fondly of time machines.

\--

Malik unleashed Tazim in the front yard (to fall in mud, mostly) after Kadar was gone and the inside of the house seemed too intimidating to bear a moment longer. The boy was a grinning madman dashing around the grass looking for puddles to flop into. Malik sat on the front steps (in need of a fresh coat) and watched his son chasing whatever he thought he’d found. 

The neighbor boys (Darim and Sef, he was reasonably sure) were carrying branches out toward the curb, stacking them at the end of their yard. The smaller one was shouting, “but I don’t want to listen to your stupid friends!”

“Then find your own!” Darim shouted back. “Dad said they could come over and they are and that’s it.” 

Sef threw the branches he had been carrying down in the middle of the front yard. His angry face was pink all across his cheeks and was half-turning to run back to the house when Tazim (with a wild shriek of joy) took off charging toward him. Malik was on his feet in an instant but the chubby-legged toddler was fast enough to throw himself (mud and all) into Sef. His little fingers (dripping dirt) were up over his head as he coiled them inward over and over. 

“Sorry,” Malik said. He pulled Tazim back and the boy struggled against his hold to be free. Sef’s pants (at this point) were covered in dirt. The kid himself didn’t seem to care, just smiled at him.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Does he like balls? We have a lot of balls in our shed that we haven’t thrown away. I could throw it with him for a while.”

“What the—Sef!” Darim shouted when he came back from the backyard with another armload of hedge branches. He kicked the dropped pile and threw his own with the others before marching over. “You were supposed to help me.”

“They’re your friends,” Sef snapped at his brother. “I already did what Dad told me to do.” He went on his way with a confident air of victory and Darim glowered after his back. 

“You are never having a brother,” Malik whispered to Tazim who was still trying to free himself from Malik’s grasp. He carried the boy back over to his own yard and dropped him in a muddy flower bed and trusted the allure of dirt and worms to keep him busy enough not to run off after his hot neighbor’s grouchy children.

Sef came back, though, carrying a bright red ball with a yellow star on it and enticed Tazim into a game of catch. Malik sat and watched, crept off the porch now and again to help Tazim figure out how to get the ball from under bushes and the car and fetched it once when it rolled into the street. They were still playing when Altair came home—looking harassed in work clothes—and did a double-take to find Sef in his yard.

“Where’s your brother?” Altair shouted at him.

“I don’t know, somewhere,” Sef shouted back. He picked the ball up and smiled at Malik before jogging off toward his dad. Altair was already around the front of his truck before Sef caught up to him, listing off the exciting events of playing catch with toddlers as he went. “He’s a good kid,” was Sef’s ultimate summary when they reached the porch. He dropped the ball and kicked it under the swing before following Altair inside (still talking). 

Malik pushed his toes against Tazim’s fat little thigh. “You’re a good kid,” he said. And Tazim slapped another handful of dirt onto the mud cake he was making with a joyful sputter. 

\--

Darim won the right to invite his friends and Sef immediately invoked his right (as little brother) to be angry about the entire existence of the universe. There was limited door slamming but Altair did end up sitting out on the porch with him while he glowered at a book he wasn’t even pretending to read.

“You can invite your friends tomorrow,” Altair said.

“Nobody will come to our house,” Sef said. “They all want me to go to their houses to play their stupid games and watch their stupid movies.”

This was clearly a problem. Altair put his bare foot against the old wood of the porch and started the swing. It was a tradition as old as Sef, that gentle rocking that had settled him down when he was a squalling infant refusing to be soothed. It wasn’t as effective now as it had been in years past, but it did manage to unwind all of the furious springs caught in Sef’s shoulders and arms. “You like the neighbors?” Altair asked.

“I guess.”

“Maybe you should invite them over for lunch or something tomorrow. Since none of your friends like our boring house.” He could tell himself (all day and night) that he was putting the idea into Sef’s head for his own benefit. The kid thrived on good will and friendships. But he was an honest enough man to know that Sef was very hard to say no to and Altair wanted Malik at his house.

“Yeah,” Sef said. It was not a commitment, really. “Why do his friends have to be stupid?”

Altair rocked the swing and Sef kicked his feet and the question went unanswered. The simple truth was that all fifteen year old boys were stupid, and would remain stupid as long as the world allowed them the luxury. “Think of something to do tomorrow. Stop worrying about your brother.”

\--

It was six-thirty-seven, after dinner, before bath, when the knocking on his door interrupted Malik’s attempts to figure out where the hell Kadar had put the dish soap. He’d bashed his fingers in the drawers when the child-safety stops had pulled the stupid thing shut again and all his fingernails felt bruised. His mood was sour and Tazim was clinging to his pant leg with a wild giggle as he walked to the door.

Sef was standing there with his skinny fist raised to knock again. “Hello Mr. Al-Sayf,” he said, “Dad’s making kabobs tomorrow and I wanted to invite you to join us. Do you eat kabobs? We make them with lamb but if you don’t like that we can get something else—chicken or beef or something.” He waved at Tazim who slapped into the mesh of the screen door and objected at the barrier that prevented him from mauling the boy twice in the same day. “He said it’ll be like at four or something. I can come get you whenever we’re ready or you can come over whenever.” And the smile on that kid’s face, the tilt of his head. He was as adorable as a kitten (or puppy) all innocence and joy. 

“Okay,” Malik said. “I eat lamb.”

“Oh good,” Sef said happily. “I’ll see you tomorrow!” Then he bounced away. 

“See,” Malik said to Tazim’s frowning little face as he watched his new best friend leave. “That is what you need to grow up to be. Not the other one. Be that kid.” Then he pulled Tazim out of the way of the door and closed it. The rest of the evening was a series of routines that ended with his son peacefully sleeping in his new room and Malik standing in his incomplete bedroom looking at boxes. 

He dug his computer out and then the modem and router and spent a while setting the internet up, sitting on his unmade bed ignoring the piles and piles of things that needed to be put away. 

\--

Darim loved kabobs. It had been a strategic decision to make them on the same day Sef invited their new neighbor and his adorable, destructive (all toddlers were) little child to visit. It was an insurance policy against Darim whining (too much) as much an incentive for him to stay and eat with everyone. 

“Yeah but, Dad,” Darim was saying from behind him. He was drinking water and stuffing his face with granola bars because he’d been out running circles around the block. The cold that was threatening to drag him under made his voice sound stuffed full of snot. “You’re not interested in him, right?”

“He’s cute.”

“Puppies are cute. Girls are cute. _Sef_ is cute. See how these are all things that you shouldn’t be…you know—attracted to? If something is _cute_ you shouldn’t be inviting it over for kabobs.”

Altair turned away from the cutting board long enough to make sure Darim was being serious. His life might have been a hundred times simpler if his son had inherited his mother’s awful sense of humor. But he was standing there with utter seriousness etched onto every inch of his face and granola stuck at the corners of his mouth. “Do you not like him?”

“I don’t know him,” Darim protested. “Neither do you.”

“But I think it would be nice to get to know him.”

Darim groaned with both hands in the air and his shoulders wilting forward. He managed to regain control of his own muscles before he hit the floor (thank goodness). “Can’t you just go out with Uncle Desmond or something? You know how you tell Sef you’re going to hang out with adult people and Sef thinks you mean going bowling or something but you’re actually going out to have sex. Do that. That is fine.”

“This is a big deal for you,” Altair said.

“Yeah,” Darim said. “This is a big deal for me. So you know—stop standing around shirtless and stuff. It’s weird, Dad.”

Altair made an agreeable nodding motion. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for pointing all this out to me.”

Darim all but did a victory lap around the kitchen before stealing a slice of pepper on his way out of the room. “You’re the best Dad!”

And well, Altair was _beholden_ as a father to answer the door with his shirt unbuttoned when Malik showed up half an hour early with his hand clenched tight around Tazim’s chubby wrist and that look of ‘please save me from toddlers’ look on his face. Malik’s face went from stressed smile to melting concentration as he looked at Altair’s bare chest. “Looks like you’ve been having a great day,” Altair said.

“Yeah,” Malik said to his chest.

Darim was sitting on the couch giving him the stink eye. 

\--

Sef talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked. Malik had learned the history of the Ibn-La’Ahad family, the specifics of Sef’s school year, what Darim wanted to be when he grew up and how Altair had gone from being an electrician to being a contractor (because electricity got boring). He knew that Sef had one Grandmother (on his Mom’s side) and one great-grandmother (still alive-and-kicking, as the saying went). He also knew what they ate for dinner every other Wednesday (Uncle Ezio came over with Italian) and that apparently there was an Uncle Desmond who baby-sat for them sometimes while ‘Dad went bowling’. 

“Clear the table,” Altair said about twenty minutes into a nonstop onslaught of information. He had left the table and returned with a beer in all that time, had a second sitting by his empty plate that was gathering condensation while Sef talked-and-talked-and-talked. “Do you want one?”

Yes, yes he did want one. But he was working on living up to his mother’s expectations so he shook his head. Altair gave the bottle back to Sef who took it with him when he went toward the kitchen (still talking). That left them with a spot of quiet. Altair grinned to himself as Sef’s talking echoed around the curve that led to the kitchen. 

“Healthy lungs on that one,” Malik said. He looked over at the couch where Tazim had gone whenever food had stopped interesting him and found nothing. “Where is he?”

Altair looked over at the couch, wrinkled up his eyebrows and then tipped his head back over the chair. “Darim!”

“Finally!” was the shout back, “he’s been here for like ten minutes.” He came back in the room with Tazim following along after him. Darim looked less than pleased to be gifted with the boy’s eternal love but Tazim wasn’t smart enough to care when he wasn’t wanted. He was holding a book under one arm and had his fingers wrapped around Darim’s finger. “Pretty sure his diaper is going to explode soon.”

“You could have brought him back,” Malik said. He got up and scooped Tazim up (while he protested). 

“No, it’s fine,” Darim said. Then he went back down the short hall to his room. 

Tazim tried to roll free of Malik’s arms, spread his fingers out and squeezed them in with a miserable pout on his face. Moving had not brought out the best of Tazim’s temper. The sudden loss of his uncle, grandmother and grandfather’s near-constant presence had left him searching empty rooms and closets for someone to amuse himself with. “I should go,” Malik said. 

Sef said, “is it his bedtime?”

“Almost,” Malik said. 

Altair stood up and walked him to the door (as if it weren’t clearly visible from where they sat. He opened the door for him when Tazim’s fitful quiet broke into a sound of dire disconcertion. The boy grabbed at the doorframe as he kicked his feet. “Good luck,” Altair said with a sly smile. “Thanks for coming.”

\--

Monday sent his sons back to school and Altair back to work, a condition that persisted for days. He worked fourteen straight hours on Thursday and came home to a civil war. Sef was standing in the kitchen throwing things at Darim. Darim was by the sink with the spray hose soaking the floor, himself and his brother while he shouted at him about being a stupid baby. 

Altair was covered in drywall, dirt, sweat, and blood. He was most likely going to lose the fingernail on his ring finger and (on top of that) he was _starving_. He stopped just outside of the growing puddle of water as his two shamefaced sons turned to look at him with equal looks of guilt before pointing at one another and simultaneously shouting about how it was the other’s fault. He turned, said, “clean it up and go to bed,” and went back outside to the porch.

It was dark outside, still warm, and the old swing was welcoming enough to sit in. He looked at his crushed fingernail in the dim light and thought fondly of food. The old wench across the street was out on her porch, squinting around for someone to make up stories about. With the front door open he could listen to the boys arguing inside and the faint swish and clank of the mop. 

Malik’s car pulled up (late, late) and he climbed out of it wearing a nice suit and a sour frown. He leaned across the top of his car, “long day?”

“Yup,” Altair said. “Is he asleep?”

“Yeah.” Malik looked into the back window. “Moving sleeping kids should be an Olympic sport.” He closed the door and huffed as he opened the back door. After a long moment, Malik straightened up again with Tazim all slack and sleepy across his shoulder. Altair got out of the swing, stepped off the side of the porch and went over to step up onto Malik’s porch. “Thanks,” Malik said when he handed Altair’s his keys. “Come in,” he said. 

Altair agreed if only because Malik had a working sink and he had no desire to deal with his own sons. He went to the kitchen and scrubbed his hands clean, found a paper towel and wrapped it around his freshly bleeding fingernail. Malik came back in the room with his suit jacket off, his tie undone and hanging open around his neck, and his sleeves rolled up. He looked at Altair and his eyebrows went up. “You win,” he conceded. “I thought I had it bad when I had to call my Dad to pick Tazim up at daycare but—that is a lot of blood.”

“It’s nothing,” Altair assured him. “Finance emergency?”

“No,” Malik said with a sigh. “Outbreak of flu at one of the stores, apparently the manager, assistant manager and half the staff are out sick. Lucky me, I got called in to cover. I cannot wait until Kadar is old enough to be taken seriously.” He yanked his fridge open, “have you eaten?”

“No,” Altair said. “Came home and found the boys destroying the kitchen.”

“I can offer you some—” Malik ducked down to move things around inside the fridge and then straightened. “Pizza? Take out Chinese? Anything that delivers?” 

“I make a habit out of eating anything I’m offered I do not have to make or pay for,” Altair said. He unwrapped the paper towel long enough to look at the damage, found it still bleeding sluggishly and wrapped it up again. “But you don’t have to. I’m sure the boys made something.”

“I insist,” Malik said. “Pizza’s generally the fastest.” Then he disappeared to find his laptop to order pizza.

\--

Altair was covered in filth and it should have been the sort of thing that made him unattractive and slightly less welcome into the house that Malik had to keep clean (by himself). Yet, it was the grime and dirt of a man who spent the entire day building things and it was _arousing_ on that primal level that drove people to find the strongest-fastest mates. Malik didn’t play on procreating (again) but he was willing to let his instincts drive him to that useless goal so long as it took him toward Altair covered in dirt. 

Then, again, there was a little knocking on his door and the appearance of the smaller of the two sons. Altair went out on his porch to talk but the screen provided poor cover for the boy’s mumbled apology. 

“What happened to your hand?” Sef asked. “I can bring you the first aid kid—do you need to go to the doctor?”

“Its fine,” Altair assured him. “I’ll take care of it when I get home. Go home, go to bed. We’ll talk about it in the morning.” There was a brief scuffle of feet on the porch and Malik tipped back far enough to watch Altair hugging his (frankly tiny) son and ruffling up his hair. Then Sef ran off and Altair was on the porch at the perfect time to get the pizza. 

“So it’s just been you since Sef was…six months?” Malik asked when they were sitting around pizza-and-wings. He still didn’t have a TV and there was only so much entertainment that could be had trying to watch a move on his laptop. “How old is he now?”

“Ten,” Altair said. He picked the ground beef off the pizza and ate it before he picked up the slice. “Maria—that’s their Mom—she got accepted at this college and I didn’t want to leave here and we weren’t going to make it in the long run anyway. She’s my best friend, she’s a great person but we weren’t going to get married or live together. College and two kids didn’t fit together in her plans so I kept them and she comes and gets them during school breaks.”

“How old are you?” Malik asked.

“Thirty two.”

Oh-God-that-was-ten years older than him. Malik wasn’t even sure if that made Altair more attractive or less. “Damn,” Malik said, “how old were you Darim was born?”

“Sixteen,” Altair said. He picked up another slice of pizza. “And my Grandmother, who loved me dearly, never once let me forget that I was responsible for his existence and therefore responsible for his care and feeding. Maria and I used to trade off who had to keep him depending on when we had big tests at school or projects. She always gave him to me for finals. He used to fall asleep on my chest while I read like physics and shit to him.” 

Malik took a drink of water to keep from lunging bodily at Altair. The man didn’t seem to realize and it was for the best because hormonal impulses could not be attractive at this juncture. “I thought I had it rough. My Mom tried to do everything. I had to fight her off when Tazim was born. I mean, it was nice having her there. I didn’t realize until this week how nice it was, but he’s my son. I want to raise him how I want him raised.”

Altair nodded. 

They ate in silence for a moment, and Malik picked at the bits of beef on his pizza. “Do you date though? I haven’t figured that out.”

“Not exactly. One-night stands, this one guy who I had sex with a lot. I’ve got enough hassle keeping up with the kids, running my business and trying to find time to sleep to worry about dating.” He took a long drink of water and set the glass down, winced at his finger and then picked up his pizza again. “What about you?”

“I just can’t figure out how,” Malik said. “I didn’t ever like going and just hanging out somewhere waiting to find people to talk to. I don’t want to do online dating. Tazim attracts women with ease—”

“Woman can smell ‘single father’ on you. Beware.”

“—But I’d rather have a man.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Altair said. “Just stay on good terms with your babysitters. It’s important to stay on good terms with them.” He finished another slice of pizza and flopped back into the couch. “I should go home. I’m exhausted.”

“You look like shit,” Malik agreed. “Your kids are probably waiting for you.” 

Altair didn’t look convinced by that but he did get to his feet. “Thank you for the pizza. Feel free to come over whenever.” Then he was shuffling out of the house and Malik was left alone with the faint outline of dirt on the couch where Altair had been sitting and the low-burning arousal in the pit of his stomach. 

\--

Two weeks later and half-a-dozen visits from Malik (primarily, he assumed, to escape the monotony of having nobody but a toddler to talk to), Altair was putting together a salad while Tazim danced along to a preschool DVD Sef had unearthed two days ago when Darim slapped him on the arm and handed him the phone. 

“Mom wants to talk to you,” he said. Then he was leaving again, trying to sneak through the living room without attracting the attention of Tazim who loved nobody (not even his own father) with the intensity that he loved Darim. 

Altair put the phone between his shoulder and his ear and scraped the tomato off the cutting board into the salad bowl. Malik was to his side working on hamburgers with a nervous shuffle from the stove to open doorway to look at Tazim. “Yeah,” Altair said.

Maria was eating something (lunch, maybe. He couldn’t remember the difference in their time zones off the top of his head) when she said, “so who’s the hot the new neighbor. I need pictures, Altair. Darim described him as ‘too young’ and ‘kind of grouchy’ and said his kid ‘wouldn’t leave him alone’ but was ‘sort of cute you know for a kid’. Sef said that he was probably from the Middle East and that he ate lamb. I just need to know how accurate that is.” 

Altair sighed and pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket. “Malik,” he said. When Malik turned around to look at him he snapped a photo. “Maria wants to know what you look like,” he said by way of explanation. He was thumbing in Maria’s phone number to send her the picture while Malik smiled into the frying pan and Maria scoffed in his ear.

“Are you trying to fuck this guy?” she asked.

“Hold on, the picture is sending,” Altair said. “Currently I’m making a salad.” He tucked his cell back into his pocket and picked up the knife. There was a healthy selection of vegetables still waiting for him to get through. Carrots and celery and something leafy and dark that Sef had decided to like this year. Altair missed spinach, he liked fresh spinach and had no problem eating it. 

Maria’s phone made a noise. “Got it—oh my God,” she said. “How old is this guy? This guy is in your kitchen right now? He’s a baby, Altair. He is an honest-to-God baby.”

Altair rolled his eyes. “Have you gotten the tickets for the kids yet? I know how you like to put it off until the very last second but it’d be nice to have some idea when I should deliver them to the airport this time.”

“Hush,” she said, “Are you trying to fuck this guy? I mean, he’s got a nice ass and from what I can tell there’s a very nice shoulder-to-waist ratio going on. Not sure about that thing on his chin.”

Altair snorted. “Plane tickets, Maria.”

“Just answer the question.”

“Yes,” Altair said with a huff. He sliced the celery down the center and chopped it into pieces small enough to escape Darim’s notice. It provided an excellent distraction from Maria making a series of confused noises. “Tickets,” he said again, “departure and arrival dates. These are the things I need to know.”

“But he’s a baby,” Maria said again. 

“I’m hanging up on you,” Altair told her. And then he did. His back pocket vibrated a minute later and he ignored it until the salad was finished, Malik announced the hamburgers were done and his two starving children materialized out of nowhere at the sound of food. “Get the booster for Tazim.”

“What did Maria want my picture for?” Malik asked.

Darim was frowning as soon as he heard the question. Sef smiled brightly as a little Christmas tree and Tazim whined after his show being paused across the room. Altair set the salad on the table and said, “the boys were talking about you, she likes to know the people they hang out with. If you don’t mind I’d send her a picture of Tazim too.”

Malik didn’t look convinced (in a good way). “Sure,” he said.

“Great, after we eat.” 

\--

There was a battle happening in his front yard. The sort of battle that had happened between him-and-Kadar since the day the ugly little baby rudely intruded into his life (unwanted and largely unwelcome). Sef, sweet and sunny in disposition, was playing with Tazim with the singular focus of a boy who had nothing better to do with his time than make his older brother miserable. 

Darim was standing at the very edge of his own yard with his arms crossed in front of his chest and a death glower on his face. Every time the ball Sef was throwing for Tazim’s amusement rolled toward Darim, the boy would kick it hard enough to sail back across the yard and Sef had to run to catch it.

Malik had caught the general idea of the fight from the few brief exchanges. Sef wasn’t supposed to be in ‘strangers’ yards. Darim was responsible for his brother. Darim wanted to be inside where the electronics were and Sef wanted to punish his brother for reasons unknown. (Or Sef actually enjoyed playing with Tazim, which was possible but unlikely.) Malik was working through the stack of papers he had to bring home with him. Having anyone play with Sef was a welcome addition to his yard.

Then Kadar showed up. Kadar showed up with a sack of movies, a two liter of carbonated caffeine and a large pizza that smelled very strongly of feta cheese. Kadar (enigmatic even on the worst of days) went directly to Darim-the-sour-faced-brother. “Little brothers are the worst,” he said.

“Do you have one?” Darim asked.

“No, I am one. We are the worst and we are completely aware of it.” He was still holding the pizza up like a professional waiter with the soda tucked between his arm and his body. “What’d you do?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Darim said (far too quickly to be innocent). “He’s not allowed just to go to anyone’s yard that he wants and he knows it!”

“Shut up,” Sef said back. “Dad meant strangers. Malik’s been to our house and Dad likes him so it doesn’t count.”

Darim scoffed. Kadar elbowed him in the side (affectionately), “gross right? Your dad likes my brother.” Darim nodded and the two of them shared a comically overstated shudder of disgust. “But you did something. I don’t care what it was. But this reeks of spite and vengeance and the only way to defeat it is to eat this pizza with me. Come, Darim, let us sit on your porch and eat pizza without inviting our brothers.”

“I have to watch him,” Darim said with one hand flung out in the general direction of Sef.

“We can see him from your porch.” Kadar motioned him away with a tilt of his head and a wave of the deliciously hot pizza in front of his face. Darim was a fifteen year old boy of limited needs in life. He followed the smell of pizza and the promise of triumph over his kid brother. 

Altair came home when the pizza was half gone and Kadar-and-Darim were laughing like fools on his front porch. Sef had fallen into rolling the ball to Tazim who had discovered worms in the dirt (and seemed to be trying to eat them). Altair stopped by his truck long enough to glance back and forth between their houses with a confused expression.

“Dad!” Darim shouted, “can Kadar come over for a while? He brought these cool movies and we were going to watch them all.”

“Who’s Kadar?”

Kadar waved at him. “Malik’s brother,” he said. “I’m seventeen.”

Altair sighed at this information and then looked at Sef, “have you eaten?”

“I don’t like pizza,” Sef said indignantly. 

And Altair sighed again. Malik dropped the papers he’d been reviewing and tried very hard not to notice the dirt smeared all around his son’s mouth or try to figure out the likelihood that he had just eaten a worm. “I was going to make dinner, you could join me.”

The idiots on Altair’s porch started laughing to themselves. 

Altair wavered back and forth for a second, clearly torn between the idea of leaving his fifteen year old unattended with an older boy and the promise of not having to cook. In the end he chose food. “Let me go change.” Darim and Kadar were already disappearing into the house with their sack of movies and their stupid laughs.

Sef stomped up to Malik’s porch and threw himself in the space next to him. 

“If it helps, big brothers actually do care about little brothers.”

“Teenagers don’t care about anything,” Sef informed him. “I don’t ever want to be a teenager.”

Someone would have to break that sad news to Sef sooner or later. Malik patted him on the back and then went to get Tazim before he ate more dirt. Altair came back and Sef followed him in with that same frown of distaste stuck on his face. He flopped onto the couch and glowered at the empty space where the TV (he had yet to buy) would eventually be. Altair came into the kitchen with Malik. “Your brother isn’t going to seduce my kid, right?”

Malik laughed and didn’t mean to. (The idea was absurd, at best.) “Uh, no. Not unless Darim turns out to be a girl.”

“He’s not that,” Altair said. “Although I’m not sure you’re getting him back tonight. I walked past them and they were talking about marathoning some series of movies and ordering Chinese.”

“What movies?” Sef asked.

“You’re not going over there,” Altair said. He looked out through the doorway at his son, the cut of his eyebrows as serious as the tone of the words. “You just need to put that out of your head.”

“I just wanted to know what movies,” Sef grumbled.

Tazim (now finally clean) went over and pulled at Altair’s pants as he lifted his feet off the ground in an ongoing attempt to climb the man like a tree. Altair was a good sport about it considering he looked exhausted. He encouraged and helped and finally just reached down and picked Tazim up.

“Well when can I go back?” Sef demanded from the other room. “This place is boring.”

Altair frowned but Malik was grinning. “You can go back as long as you don’t want dinner and you go straight to your room.”

“Fine,” Sef said. He stomped across the floor to the front door. 

Altair looked at Tazim who smiled with drool on his chin and fingers in his mouth. “Stay small forever,” he said to the boy. “I liked them when they were your size.” 

\--

There were three phone calls while he was at Malik’s. One from Darim asking if Sef was supposed to be there because he had just stomped into the house, slammed the door, said nothing and gone to his room in a huff. Altair assured him that it was fine.

Then there was one from Sef (about an hour later, when dinner was ready and Altair was watching Malik feed Tazim and thinking highly inappropriate thoughts about how attractive the man was) asking if he could get something to eat out of the kitchen and apologizing for his behavior and saying he wouldn’t try to watch the stupid movies. Altair told him he could and then asked him to give the phone to Darim to tell him it was also okay.

The third one was from Maria. “Your son called me,” she said. “You’ve been mistreating the baby again, Altair.”

Altair (at this point) was sitting on Malik’s couch while the man gave Tazim a quick bath and got him ready for bed. The excuse of staying for dinner had worn through forty-five minutes ago and he was just enjoying the quiet of the house. He said, “what have I done now?”

“He says that you sided with Darim and Darim was wrong. I’m not sure what Darim did but whatever it was, it was wrong. Also he says that some dumb kid is watching movies with Darim and you aren't there and they could be doing ‘literally anything’. So I asked him where you were and he said you were at the neighbor’s house. And I asked what you were doing there and he said, ‘eating or something, he’s been there for hours’.”

“Darim is watching movies with Kadar, Malik’s brother, and I was eating dinner because I was avoiding them. Did you buy the plane tickets yet?”

“I did. Do we know Kadar, Malik’s brother, well enough to leave him alone with our son or has your dick just decided to make the decisions for your brain?”

Altair pinched the bridge of his nose and huffed at her. Her laughed was a pretty-musical-thing from far-away. “Malik said he wasn’t going to impregnate our son and I honestly don’t care about anything else at the moment.”

“You have two children, Altair. I think you should know where they come from at this point. Boys cannot have babies.”

“No shit,” Altair said.

“If they could, I imagine you’d have a litter.” Oh-and wasn’t she so very brilliant in her wit and the utter joy with which she said the words. “Speaking of, how is seducing your baby neighbor going? Darim told me the other day you just stand in the backyard without your shirt on. I happen to know, reliably, that watching you mow the lawn has an aphrodisiac effect on people. Sef’s conception attests to this.”

Malik came back in the room (without his kid) and plopped down on the couch next to him. He smiled in a nonspecific way and Altair smiled back at him.

“I’m hanging up on you now,” he said. And then he did. The whole house was quiet save for the gentle murmuring of lullabies from Tazim’s room. Altair tucked his phone back in his pocket and enjoyed the quiet.

“Are you any good at putting beds together?” Malik asked. “I still haven’t gotten mine together.”

“I wouldn’t say I was good at it, but I can probably figure it out,” Altair said. Then they were getting up and going down the short, fat hallway to the back of the house where Malik’s bedroom (an impressive size to be sure) was. There were still boxes everywhere in the room, pulled open and half gutted for essentials while the majority of the stacks remained untouched. His bed was in pieces against a wall but his mattresses looked well-used in the few weeks that he’d been living there. “Do you have tools?”

“Do I need tools?” Malik asked.

Altair looked at the bed, all of the screws that held it together were still in their holes (probably best for not losing them in the move) but there was most definitely no way to put the thing back together as a cohesive whole without the use of some kind of tool. He nodded his head. “Yeah, you need something.”

“No I don’t have any tools,” Malik said.

Altair pulled his phone back out and called his beloved older son who bitched all the way through finding the toolbox with just the screwdrivers and pliers in it. 

\--

It was Kadar that brought him the tool box. He handed it to Malik with one of his hands on the doorjamb to his bedroom and the world’s most obnoxious expression. “Remember your kitchen while you’re fixing your bed, Malik.” 

“Remember I’m still bigger than you and I can kick your ass,” Malik responded. He pulled the box out of Kadar’s hand and shooed him away before he could say anything further. Kadar left with a laugh.

“What about your kitchen?” Altair asked.

“Uh,” and why not share that particular stupidity with Altair who took his picture and had frequent ambiguous conversations with his ex-whatever-she-was about Malik. Darim seemed to have decided that the two of them were destined for one another and spent all of his time actively glowering at them about it. “Kadar said he’d paint the kitchen if I made it four weeks without sleeping with you.”

“That is an excellent deal,” Altair said. “I hate painting.”

That wasn’t the point of the bet. Malik was going to tell him that but Altair straightened up from where he’d been laying the bed pieces out, stepped over one of the long sides and closed his hand around the tool box as if he just meant to take it from him. Then he ducked forward and kissed him and it was a gloriously-wet-and-welcome thing. Soft at first and then Malik pulled at his neck and pressed back against his lips. The tool box got thrown sideways and Altair was kissing him intently with hands on his face and a tongue in his mouth. Malik was fine-with-that, pulling at his arms (his incredible fucking arms) and crushing them closer together just to get a chance to feel the wall of muscle that Altair’s body seemed to be comprised of. He was six-seconds from stripping them both naked when Altair pulled back. 

“Four weeks is like next Thursday or something isn’t it?”

Malik wasn’t even sure what day it was. “Uh, yeah? I think.”

Altair was looking at him, the disheveled set of his clothes and then at his face with a completely pleased look. “Your kitchen needs new paint,” he pointed out.

“Not really,” Malik assured him.

Oh and Altair laughed. Then he kissed him again and it was far sweeter and less urgent than the first. “We should put your bed together. Then I have to go home before Sef calls his Mother to tell on me again.”

“About what?”

“Maria got pregnant at fifteen,” Altair said. “My Grandma said she ‘trusted us’ to behave ourselves and she let Maria come over after school all the time and then we discovered sex and then we had a kid and rest of my teenage years were spent arguing over who had to change his diaper. The only binding contract we ever made was that our sons wouldn’t be left unattended at fifteen.”

“Ah,” Malik said. “Fifteen?” 

“Yeah,” Altair said. “It did not go over well with the parents either. Maria’s Mom and Dad kicked her out and my Grandmother let her stay but we had to get jobs to pay rent and take care of the baby. And we had to finish school or we got kicked out of her house. Not exactly the life I want my sons to have.” 

“My girlfriend got pregnant and my Mom cried for three days and then called a lawyer to see what they’d have to do to get full custody of the baby before he was born. I had to fight _my Mom_ to keep my own child.” Then he looked at the bed, “so what should I do to help?”

“Hold things,” Altair said. Then he set to work. (And looked very nice doing it.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my God, the second-hand embarrassment in this chapter nearly killed me.

Desmond came over on a rainy Tuesday. He timed it so he arrived after both of the troublemakers were away at school. Altair had not even bothered to get dressed yet (he enjoyed his days off best when he could just walk around in his sweat pants he slept in and not even care). 

“He’s how old?” Desmond said (again). He was three-fourths his way through the omelet he’d conned Altair into making for him and one-third the way through the ridiculous jug of juice he’d brought with him. (Altair did not even ask the reason behind the juice, he did not even care.)

“Twenty two,” Altair said.

“So he’s closer in age to your kid than you,” Desmond said.

“His brother is seventeen.”

“So his brother and your son could be in the same high school.” Desmond took another bite of egg. “I mean, he’s got a kid though. It’s not like you’re old or anything. You’re only thirty-one?”

“Thirty two,” Altair said patiently.

“Do your kids like him? I mean, I know you decided to keep your sex life and your family in separate places but I’m pretty sure trying to dick your next door neighbor kind of destroys all your efforts. There’s no way Darim hasn’t figured it out already.”

“Darim is fifteen, as far as he’s concerned there is no reason to do anything as an adult if sex is not somehow involved. He’s adamantly opposed on the grounds that it is disgusting. But he likes Kadar. He’s supposed to go—do something—paint ball? With Kadar this weekend. Sef likes him.”

“But does Sef know?”

“Unless Darim has magically developed the power of not blurting out everything he thinks, Sef must have at least heard. Look—I like the guy. He’s hot and he’s got his life together and his kid is cute.”

“That’s even worse,” Desmond said. “Like, you haven’t dated—ever. You don’t date. Your idea of a date is calling that guy that you have sex with and watching porn while you make out. You didn’t even date Maria.”

“I’m not dating him,” Altair said flatly.

“No, you’re just spending a lot of time with him. Having dinner at his house. Letting your kids get all attached to him and his adorable toddler child. None of that is dating.” Desmond was working his way around to a point (and if anyone had a relevant opinion on the politics of dating, it would be the man who dated everyone) but Altair’s cell phone interrupted him. 

It was Malik who said, “I need a favor from you and I just want to apologize before I even ask.”

“What is it?” Altair asked.

“Tazim has a fever and I need someone to pick him up from his daycare because I cannot leave for at least another hour and a half. I tried his Mom but she’s got class today and I’d rather lose my job than ask my Mother at this point. I can probably get Kadar to skip for the rest of the day if I have to but—”

“Whoa,” Altair said. “Stop. Call your daycare and tell them I’m coming to get him and then tell me what daycare, where it is and Tazim’s last name.”

Malik’s breath of relief was a blissful little noise before he took in a breath. “Thank you,” he said before he said anything else. Altair jotted down the information on the daycare and caught Desmond smirking at him from the end of the table when he hung the phone up.

“Oh yeah,” Desmond said. “I can see how you’re not dating this guy at all.”

“His kid is sick,” Altair said. “I’ve been there, it sucks. Shut up and get out of my house.”

Desmond’s smirk just got wider. He didn’t leave but stuck around while Altair went to pick up Tazim (he had to stop by where Malik worked to steal the car seat first). The daycare was one of those family-owned ones run by a sweet-grandmother type who interrogated him ruthlessly about who he was there to pick up and checked his photo ID with rigorous scrutiny before guiding him to the toddler classroom and watching (hawk-like) as Altair picked Tazim up off the cot they’d put him on. He grabbed the kid’s blanket (Malik assured him it was essential to survival) and a couple of diapers and an extra package of wipes (since he had none of the above). The (young looking) teachers wished him the best and reminded him that the boy couldn’t come back until his fever was gone for twenty-four hours. Tazim just laid his head against Altair’s chest with his tiny forehead burning like a baked stone. 

Altair texted: ‘want me to give him Tylenol?’

Malik answered in the next second (nearly): ‘yes please. How bad is it?’

The boy looked all pink with heat and was pretty still considering his usual energy level. There was no way to be sure what his temperature actually was without a thermometer (but the office lady had told him was one-oh-two when they took it thirty minutes ago). Altair sent back: ‘probably teething. He looks tired but not sick.’

Then there was a brief stop at a drug store and the sweet well-wishes of the many ladies that worked there. They made it home safely and Desmond was sitting on the porch with his jug of juice and his skeptical amusement. “That is a sight I thought I’d never see again.”

“What?” Altair asked. Tazim was just laying against his chest (mouth open, drool rolling out) as he stepped up onto his porch. 

“That,” Desmond said with a motion to the boy. “It’s been like nine years since Sef was that small.” Then he stood up and opened the door for him. “Do you need anything?”

“No I’m good,” Altair said. He’d dealt with sick babies before, spent his share of long afternoons worrying over fevers and whimpering toddlers. “You going to come over for dinner sometime soon? The boys miss you.”

“Yeah, when are they leaving to go to Maria’s this year?”

“Two weeks,” Altair called back. He sat on his couch and tugged Tazim’s shirt (and undershirt) off to let the heat escape his skin. Then he opened the Tylenol, read the instructions, measured the dose and prodded the boy into sitting up far enough to take it. He seemed to like the syrupy taste of it (at least, Sef had hated the taste). Then Altair laid on the couch with the heated little stone of toddler on his chest and rubbed his tiny back. “You’ll make it,” he assured him.

Tazim made grabby motions for his blanket that had fallen to the side and Altair picked it up of the floor and handed it to him so he could close his fist around it and suck on the gummy end. The boy made it barely five minutes before he fell asleep and Altair stretched his arm out to find the remote and flicked through the channels until he found something quiet and semi-entertaining to watch.

\--

Malik rushed home through the rain, cursing every member of his stupid family as he went, and sprinted through the rain to Altair’s house. He kicked his shoes off on the porch and went through the door expecting to find (disaster? Drama?) and walked in on Tazim sleeping on Altair’s chest while Altair snoozed on the couch. There was no shortage of people that loved Tazim, his grandmother and grandfather (on both sides) had loved him with deepest and most sincere intensity since his birth. Kadar loved the kid as much as any kid could love another. But there hadn’t been anyone, not-a-one, that was not a blood relative that had loved Tazim in the whole of his tiny life. 

The sight of him sleeping so easily on Altair was a breath-taking, stomach twisting kind of sight. The sort that made Malik fill paradoxically full of joy and struck dumb with some indefinable feeling of worry and unworthiness. 

“He’s much cooler now,” Altair said softly. He opened his eyes and stretched very slowly with one hand on Tazim’s bare back. “There’s a puddle of drool on my shirt. It’s just teething.”

“Thank you,” Malik said. “I—I couldn’t think of anyone else to call.”

“No problem,” Altair said softly. “Glad to help. Want to talk about what’s going on with your Mom?”

Malik shuffled close enough to put his hand on Tazim’s forehead, found it sweaty but average heat and collapsed (but made it look casual) back to sit on the coffee table in front of the couch. He let out a sigh and scratched at his scalp through his hair. “She just keeps going on about how she doesn’t understand why I left. She has this way of saying things about how she wants to help but they’re also insults. So every day she’s calling to make sure I’ve fed him and changed his diaper—she insists he has to be changed every hour—and I could have called her but she would have lectured me about it. I should never have moved out, I wasn’t ready to take care of a child on my own, I’m too young for so much responsibility.”

Altair hummed an appreciative noise at the words. “Sounds like she misses you.”

“Oh, and she keeps saying how she thinks Tazim should stay over with her because she doesn’t like the idea of her grandchild being raised by strangers. She never put her sons in daycare—no, we were raised in the boring back room at the store. As exciting as chasing Tazim through the office would be, it’s not how I want him to grow up.”

Altair was smiling at him. “Well,” he said, “take it from someone who had to pay his grandmother to babysit his son—it seems like a hassle to have to deal with all of her well-meant advice just for the sake of free childcare. And she will spoil your son rotten. And you will not agree with anything she does while he is with her. And you will never ever concede the point that you are very young and having a child is a very trying responsibility. But, in the end, if your child is happy, well fed and well-loved you have succeeded.” 

“But does she have to be so obnoxious about it?” Malik asked. 

Altair laughed softly. His hand rested against Tazim’s back like bracing him for the motion of his chest lifting and rising but the boy barely even noticed. Then Altair said, “so we want to have sex with each other.”

It was not what Malik was expecting. “Yeah.”

“As a casual arrangement or a relationship?”

Malik sat back. He considered the question with as much care as he was able while looking at his son sleeping on his neighbor’s magnificent chest. His pride was bruised from his Mother’s never-ending assault and his ego was deflated from the realization that he was in over his head (but who wasn’t). His whole body was starved for any touch more promising and adult than the hugs Tazim slobbered all over him. Altair was hot-and- _nice_ and old enough to hand out sage sounding advice without being old enough to make the advice sound condescending. “I’d date you.”

“Would you date my kids?” Altair asked.

“That’s illegal and immoral.”

“Smart-ass,” Altair said softly. “I haven’t dated, ever. I made the choice when Sef was a baby that it wasn’t worth putting my kids through.”

“I like your kids. Not sure they both like me, but I like them.” He ran his hand down Tazim’s back and shifted forward so he was crouching to the side of the couch. He licked his lips and leaned up to kiss Altair. 

“I like kissing you,” Altair mumbled back. “But probably shouldn’t around Darim, yet.”

\--

The most important thing was that nothing changed. Malik and him ‘dating’ was no different than the time before they’d mutually agreed on the notion. Sef still purposefully went over into Malik’s yard just to piss off Darim who had to stay outside and watch him. Darim still complained wildly every time Altair stood on the back porch drinking coffee with his shirt off. Tazim continued being an adorable fuzzy-haired toddler who considered every house to be his own personal domain.

The only important addendum to his life was the sudden presence of Kadar who came over on a Friday to get Darim for paintball and didn’t leave. Saturday, after Sef (his baby tattle-tale) was asleep, Altair stopped in front of the TV (where his son and his boyfriend’s brother were playing games) long enough to get the full attention of the teenagers.

“Dad!” Darim shouted.

“Dude!” Kadar shouted.

“I’m going next door,” Altair said (specifically to his son), “do not get into the food. Do not leave the house. Do not get yourself or your guest pregnant while I’m gone.”

“I’m a guy,” Kadar said.

“Yeah, just don’t even try explaining that to him. It doesn’t matter. Just because you got someone pregnant when you were fifteen doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t know what a condom is, Dad,” Darim said.

“Make sure you use one!” Kadar shouted toward the door.

Darim was gagging and Kadar was giggling when Altair closed the door behind him. He went across his lawn and Malik’s and let himself in the front door. There was a brand new TV (still its box) and the hardware for mounting it to the wall sitting by the door. Malik was coming out of his little kitchen with a sandwich (without a shirt). 

“Kadar still there?” he said.

“Yes,” Altair said. He picked up the box of hardware for mounting the TV and looked for the instructions on the outside of the box. “I’m sure he’s talking about how disgusting he finds us to be.”

Malik set his sandwich on one of his little side tables and pulled the box out of his hands. “Yeah?” he said but didn’t seem to care about the answer. He was only a couple of inches shorter but he was barefoot and Altair was still wearing his shoes. Malik’s arm went over his shoulder as he lifted himself up to kiss Altair. His skin was hot-and-bare and Altair slid his work-roughened hands over it and smiled into the way it made Malik shiver. There was a couch somewhere behind him that Malik was nudging him toward but Altair didn’t find it until he was falling into it. He landed on his ass with a loud thump of the couch nearly tipping backward and then Malik was landing on top of him. His mouth tasted like mustard and pickles, his smooth hands were sneaking up under the bottom of Altair’s shirt to rub against his chest.

“Thursday,” Altair said when he could think of no reason in the world why he should strip off Malik’s pants and consummate this idea of theirs. He was breathing hard, dick thickening in his pants (objecting about how stupid he was) and Malik was shifting around on his lap in such a way as to be pure torture. The pink arousal on Malik’s face made him look _young_ and if the notion of winning a bet (which he liked doing as often as possible) didn’t reign his libido in than the way Malik looked almost exactly like his seventeen year old brother did.

“I don’t care about the kitchen,” Malik told him. “I’ll paint it.”

Then they were kissing again and it was hard to remember why he even wanted to stop because Malik’s ass was firm under his hands. And Malik moaned into his mouth when he squeezed his fingers around his ass. So what if he looked young, he wasn’t that young and they were all consenting adults and—

“Did you hear that?” Malik asked. He jerked upright and looked down the hall toward the baby’s room. 

“No?” Altair whispered.

“I thought I heard Tazim.”

“Want to go check?”

“No,” Malik said. Then, after a pause. “Maybe.” But he was up on his feet in the next minute and padding away. He came back a moment later. “He’s sleeping.”

“Never had sex with your kid in the house?” Altair guessed.

“No,” Malik said with a sigh. “I could have sworn I heard him. And I kept thinking I leave his door open so I can hear him and I want to rip your clothes off with my teeth but then I think what if he gets out of his crib and I don’t hear him?”

Altair laughed. “The good news is that is that if that ever happens, he won’t remember. Darim walked in on me and Maria twice when he was little and he doesn’t remember it now. I remember it, however.” He got up off the couch and picked up the box of hardware. “Why don’t we wait until he’s visiting your parents or something? Might be easier to concentrate.”

Malik frowned down the hallway toward his baby’s doorway. “But orgasms,” he said.

“But your TV,” Altair whined back at him. He didn’t even object to Malik basically doing nothing but standing a few feet behind him watching him hang the TV either. By the time he left (a relatively short hour and a half later) he wanted nothing more than he wanted five minutes of time by himself to masturbate to fantasies of what Malik looked like completely naked. Malik was still frowning over how he cock-blocked himself when he kissed Altair good bye.

\--

“Is this really the sort of thing you should be telling your baby brother?” Kadar asked him the next morning when he finally came over to visit him (like he had been saying he was going to do for two weekends in a row before getting sidetracked by Darim). “I’m impressionable. I might think it’s okay to have sex if you talk about sex to me.”

“You are having sex,” Malik said. “I’m not. Maybe you should talk to me about it.”

“Wasn’t it weird that he was so understanding? Maybe it doesn’t work, you know? He is old.”

Malik considered dumping a glass of water over Kadar’s head and remembered he’d have to clean it up and that his son would see it and Tazim liked to repeat everything he saw. “Or he was traumatized by having his son walk in on him having sex. I just want to get naked with someone,” Malik groaned as he folded forward and banged his head against the table. “Why does he have to be perfect?”

“Um, he’s not or he would have told you to get over yourself, ripped your clothes off and had his way with you on the living room floor,” Kadar said. 

Malik could only sigh in response. “His kids are leaving next week though. For like a whole week. You should watch Tazim for me.”

“You mean Mom should watch Tazim for you.”

“But she’ll have to know _why_ and I can’t tell her that I need her to take my kid because I desperately miss sex.” He sat up again in time to watch Tazim run into a wall while attempting to push his big truck across the floor. It knocked him backward but otherwise did not seem to affect him at all. 

“You could just tell her that Tazim misses her. Come on, all I hear about at home is how she wants Tazim back so she can cuddle him. She calls him her little bug and whines about how he’s gone all the time. You don’t even need a reason just show up and give her the child.” Kadar could say that because he was seventeen, beloved and had never gotten some random woman pregnant and then moved out with their mother’s only grandchild. “Or you can grow old and die whining about celibacy. Whichever is good for you.”

“I hate you,” Malik said.

\--

Preparing his sons for visiting their mother was always a practice in extreme patience. When Sef and Darim were still too small to fly anywhere by themselves, Maria had flown out to get them and taken them back with her. Altair was then obliged to fly out and pick them up and return with them. He hated planes. He hated flying. He hadn’t minded the overnight visit with Maria in her fabulous west coast apartment. But he was glad when the boys were old enough to fly by themselves.

“Did she take the whole week off this year?” Darim asked (twice in ten minutes).

“I don’t know,” Altair answered (again).

“I hope we don’t have that babysitter we had last summer,” Sef said with a frown. “Could you please tell her that Darim is old enough to babysit and we really don’t need some weird old lady to do it?” He was shoving clothes into his bag as if he were running away rather than going to visit his mother for a week. Darim was standing in the doorway of his baby brother’s room sighing over his incompetence. “Remember your swim trunks.”

“I got them,” Sef snapped back.

“You say that every year and every year she has to buy you new ones.” Darim was already packed (of course) with all of his clothes and all of his electronics he simply could not live without. Kadar had bequeathed a gently used handheld game system to him and Darim had not been parted from it since. 

“So?” Sef demanded. He stood up, surveyed his handiwork and scratched his chin. “Do you think I got it all Dad?”

Altair was sitting on the bed next to the suitcase that had long trailing ends of pants and shirts sticking out on all sides. He looked around Sef’s skinny little body and said, “I don’t know, son. There’s still some things left in your dresser.”

Sef didn’t laugh (he never laughed, he just did not appreciate the humor). “I’m serious.”

“Go get washed up for dinner and I’ll check your suitcase,” Altair said. He waved his hands to shoo him away and Sef went with glee. That left Darim to stare at him from the doorway as he picked apart the disaster of Sef’s packing and put it into some semblance of order. “Did you remember your swim trunks?”

“No,” Darim said. “I don’t take them because then I’ll get new ones.”

Well, can’t blame a boy for working the system when it made itself so obvious. Altair paired up pants and shirts, undershirts and underwear and socks and laid them in nice little piles that Sef was sure to destroy as soon as he arrived at his Mother’s. He picked out the clothes he’d bought for the kid most recently and replaced it with old things he cared less about going missing. “Are you going to be nice to your Mom this time?”

“Probably,” Darim said. “I’m mad at you right now, not her.”

“Oh good. Just remember you have to come back and finish the school year. Then you can run away from me all summer if you want.” He flipped the top of the suitcase closed and zipped it up. When he was standing fully upright again he looked at Darim (a tall boy at fifteen, all round in the ribs). “What did I do?”

“Are you serious about the neighbor kid?” Darim asked.

“First, he is not a child. He’s an adult. Despite what you think, I am thirty two not seventy. He is twenty two not sixteen. Yes, I am moderately serious about him.”

“So you’re really dating him?”

“Yes.”

Darim’s lip curled up at the thought. “That guy is like seven years older than me. You think he’s the best choice? I can’t respect someone like that. And don’t give me that look because even if _you_ haven’t ever dated anyone I’ve suffered through plenty of Dad-replacements out with Mom to know that I’m supposed to suddenly respect and obey some stranger that I’ve never met simply because he’s boning my Mom.”

Altair covered his face with both hands and thought very sincerely of ripping up the return tickets. (Not really. After all, Darim was a product of years spent in Altair’s care and he couldn’t blame the kid for turning out like his parents. But ‘boning’ was one-hundred-percent Maria and zero percent him.) Then he let out a painful groan and cleared his throat. “You have to stop saying ‘boning’. I understand that you’re fifteen and you are wise to the world but it’s just so stupid sounding. To address your concern, Malik is acutely aware that you don’t like or respect him. I am aware of it as well. I’m not inviting the man to move in, I’m just dating him. He has no authority over you or your brother unless I specifically say so. You need to be as polite as possible in his presence. He is not a replacement for your Mother simply because he’s _boning_ your father.”

“That’s just gross,” Darim said. 

“It’s not gross yet,” Altair assured him. “But as soon as you are gone…”

“You’re disgusting,” Darim said as he turned to walk away from him.

“Don’t worry, son! I won’t get pregnant!” He was laughing at Darim slamming his door and Sef came back with his hair wet from combing it and his hands still damp with water. 

“What?” Sef asked.

Altair put his suitcase on the floor and picked the boy up. Sef was still small enough to manage it, was agreeable enough to being hugged and held on with his bony-bony knees whenever Altair carried him anywhere. “Don’t grow up, okay?”

“Can’t promise what I can’t do,” Sef answered him. But he hugged him as tight as ever and Altair kissed his cheek before he dropped him back on the floor. “Are we ready to go? When are we meeting Malik?”

“We’ll leave in five minutes when your brother is done hiding.”

“I’m not hiding!” Darim shouted, “you’re just gross!”

Altair laughed as he went out to get his keys from the kitchen table. It amused him the whole night as Darim tried to pretend he didn’t love the awful pizza and arcade games at the mouse-themed pizza place they went to eat. Malik was a nervous flutter chasing after his tiny child through the place. 

“More tokens,” Darim said with fists full of tickets for the prize counter. Altair had a whole cup full of the coveted little coins and the promise of winning something that would make Sef whine for hours. “Dad.”

“Watch Tazim for ten minutes so Malik can eat something and I’ll give you the rest,” Altair said.

“Why can’t you watch him?”

“Because I don’t want the tokens.” Oh and the death glare he got for that bit of genius. Darim dropped the tickets on the table, picked up a piece of greasy pizza and went to inform Malik that he could sit down for a few minutes. Malik was gracious (enough) but not convinced as he left his kid in Darim’s care. Darim had a fresh handful of tokens and years’ worth of knowledge about what games worked best for kids too little to follow instructions.

Malik sat sideways in the booth to watch Tazim sitting on Darim’s lap as they played a racing game. “He told me to go entertain you because you were old and boring,” Malik said.

“He’s not always excited about going to visit his Mother,” Altair said softly. “See, he remembers when she lived out here and he remembers when she left to go to graduate school. Sef never really had her around so he doesn’t know any different.”

Malik finally looked away from Tazim to look at him. “Was it…nice? Did you part on good terms at least?”

“Yeah,” Altair said. “We didn’t have any illusions about our chances. The only reason we stayed together as long as we did was mutual survival. She was my best friend in high school and we decided to discover sex together and it ruined her life. I don’t blame her for leaving. I told her when she got pregnant with Sef that I’d take them. Maria is a good mother but this just wasn’t what she wanted.”

“Kids?” Malik said.

“No. I meant—she didn’t want to stay here. She didn’t want to live in the same place her whole life. When she first decided she was going to go she tried to get me to go with her. I told her that I wouldn’t go but she could.” He shrugged, that was years-and-years ago. “I’m pretty sure any vindictive feelings I might have had about the whole arrangement were expressed in the screaming and shrieking that Darim did when she packed her stuff to leave. He ripped a handful of her hair out.”

Malik made a face at that. “I can’t imagine. I have two parents that were very, very involved in my life. Tazim’s Mom is in school right now and she said she would have had an abortion if I hadn’t asked her not to. So she comes by now and again but most of the time it’s just me and I keep thinking, you know, how is this going to change him as he grows up? Because I grew up so different.”

“Kids adapt,” Altair said. “You’ll be fine. He’ll be fine. He’s got people that love him, that’s what matters.”

Then Darim was back with Tazim grinning like a fool and holding out the string of tickets he’d scored from the racing game. “Ten minutes,” Darim announced as he dropped Tazim in Altair’s lap. “Pay up.”

Altair handed him the cup. “Give at least four of those to Sef.”

“Yeah yeah,” then Darim was gone again.

Tazim settled into his lap and ate the pepperoni off his pizza while Malik smiled at him. 

\--

Saturday, Malik dropped Tazim off with his grandmother who barely bothered to notice Malik’s existence but snatched his son from him with exaggerated devotion and wet kisses. “But I’m putting his bag here,” Malik said (six times at least) while his Mother went-on-on-and-on about how Tazim had been away for too long and how desperately he had been missed. Kadar was half-dressed for work, eating a toaster pastry in the front hall with his work shirt hanging from his fist. He made a gagging face to the side and smiled with the same doting intensity when their Mother showed Tazim to him. “But the bag, Mom,” Malik tried again.

“Yes, go,” his Mother said with a flutter of her hand. “Leave me with my baby boy.”

“I’m your baby boy.”

“Hush,” Mother said. “Shouldn’t you already have left? You’re my son, I do not have to pay you if you show up late.” There were probably labor laws that said she did, but Malik wasn’t going to argue the point with her. “How long do I get to keep my precious baby boy?”

“All weekend if you want,” Malik said.

“Oh,” his Mom said and began listing all the things she intended to do with him. Malik left them to it and Kadar followed him outside. His idiot kid brother was grinning at him from the driver-side of his car with pastry crumbs on his lips and a sly smile on his face. 

“All weekend, huh?” Kadar repeated.

“Shut up,” Malik said. Then he got into his own car and went to work at one of the stores (a job he had hated as a teenager and detested even more now) doing check out and stocking and manager paperwork depending on what needed done. It was nine grueling hours of unhappiness (with a steady flutter of increasing heat low in his gut about the near certainty of sex awaiting him at home). He called his Mom after the evening manager showed up and asked if he should get his son and was told (bluntly) that he had given up custody for the weekend and need not call again.

So he went home and contemplated going to his own house to change his clothes or just inviting himself into Altair’s. The man had just sent his children off on planes and while he seemed gleefully okay with the idea, there was just no telling if that good humor would sustain itself. So Malik went to his own house and got changed and was about to call Altair when he heard his door open and close.

“I invited myself over,” Altair said. He went straight to the kitchen as Malik walked down the hall. “I brought dinner.” There was the sound of a pan hitting the little table in the kitchen and then Altair walking back out toward him. “Some casserole thing, I don’t know, Desmond always gives me food when the kids leave.” He was pulling his shirt over his head as he walked through the living room. “How was work?” he asked in the brief seconds before he bent low enough to put his arms around Malik’s back and pull him up off the floor. 

Malik might have answered too if not for the fact that his hot-ass neighbor-boyfriend had just picked him up with hardly more effort than lifting a sack of flour. If not for how his hot-ass neighbor’s incredible chest was naked skin against the old-T-shirt-cotton of his shirt. Maybe, if not for how smug and self-assured the smile on Altair’s lips was distracting him from anything but kissing him. He put his arms around Altair’s shoulders and wrapped his legs around him and kissed him in the exact filthy manner he’d been meaning to do for weeks. 

“Your door’s on the left, right?” Altair mumbled in the middle of one sloppy-wet kiss. Malik nodded, ducked to suck on his neck and then pressed their mouths together again as his elbow glanced the doorway. He reached out blindly to flick at the light switch to turn it back on and Altair dropped him on the bed without ceremony. “I cannot wait to get you naked,” Altair said.

“Yeah,” Malik said in agreement. He sat up enough to yank his shirt off over his head and threw it to the side. Altair was kicking his shoes off and bending over to pull off his socks and undo his pants. Malik lifted his hips off the bed to shove his pants down and kicked them off before leaning forward far enough to drag Altair back up against him. He was sitting and Altair was standing and they were doing a terrible job keeping up with kissing. “What are we doing exactly?” Malik asked into the heated skin of Altair’s neck. He nipped at the unmarked skin and then sucked at the pinked pinches until they were rosy in color but not permanent. Altair was shoving his pants down, impatiently pushing Malik flat on the bed to climb on top of him. 

“You mean specifically or a general primer on gay sex?” Altair didn’t even give him time to answer, just dragged him into the middle of the bed with a flex of his fantastic fucking arms and then kissed him again. Malik was all set to be shoved flat to the bed and haughtily topped (and for the purpose of this encounter he wasn’t even going to protest) so the eager, easy, happy way Altair crawled up into his lap surprised him. “What are my options?” Altair asked. His hands were rubbing at Malik’s skin—all rough from work—and Malik was tracing the muscles of his back down to his ass. 

“I like almost everything,” Malik said. He squeezed his hands around Altair’s ass and shivered at the moan that rolled out of his mouth. His wet-pink-lips obscene and inviting even as Altair rocked down against his belly with the smooth, hard length of his dick. “Not that great at blow jobs yet but I haven’t had a lot of practice.”

Altair laughed at that. “I don’t even think I’d given someone a blow job at twenty two.” He kissed Malik again and it was wet and urgent and needy. (Things he just would not have associated with him.) Then he sat back, shifted on his knees and looked straight down at Malik’s dick. There was a flinch between his eyebrows and vaguely (almost unnoticeable) flattening of his grin. “Wow,” he said.

Malik got up on his elbows to look down at their dicks.

“I mean,” Altair said. “ _Wow_.”

“What?” Malik asked.

Altair looked at him as if he were insane. “You cannot seriously tell me the fact that your dick is bigger than you kid’s arm has escaped your attention.”

“It is not,” Malik said. “Your dick is big too.”

“No,” Altair said (very patiently) as he ran the flat of his palm up Malik’s dick and curled his fingers around it. He lifted it away from his belly as if he were testing the weight and let it drop again. “My dick is slightly above average. Your dick could star in porn. Fuck,” he said. He scooted backward again, both of his hands wrapping around Malik’s dick and that look of comical disbelief on his face got a little more aghast and a little less humorous. “You fuck people with this?”

“Yes,” Malik said. 

“A lot of people?”

Malik sat up and Altair let go of his dick with a slightly guilty look. “Enough people. Is this a big deal?”

“Yes,” Altair said. “I’m surprised you can walk. Have you really taken a good look at this thing?” He was staring down again. All his charm seeping away the longer he stared in open-faced horror. Malik considered shoving him off the bed and dragging a pillow over his lap but then Altair was stroking his dick again and he thought he could withstand the freak out a bit longer. “This is like eleven inches.”

“No, it’s not,” Malik said.

“I’ve drank out of glasses that aren’t this wide around.”

“No you are just exaggerating. Look, it’s not that big of a deal.”

“This is a huge deal,” Altair said. He looked up so suddenly they nearly knocked their heads together. The fact that he was ten years older than Malik somehow made his shock, surprise and dismay a touch too ridiculous to be taken seriously. (If not for his hands that were still stroking Malik’s cock.) “Your dick is wonderful,” Altair said to the (undoubtedly) unhappy frown on Malik’s face. 

“You don’t seem to believe that,” Malik said. 

“I just don’t like big dicks,” Altair said. But his two hands that were magnetized to Malik’s dick didn’t seem to agree with him. “That doesn’t mean your monstrous whale cock isn’t wonderful.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve ruined sex for me forever.” Malik pushed at his chest and Altair rolled to the side but wrapped his legs around him and dragged him down after him. “This wasn’t what I meant,” Malik said on his elbows with Altair’s eyes still peering down at his dick. “Look if you don’t want to—”

“We’re already here,” Altair said mostly to his dick. 

“That’s true,” Malik agreed. He slipped lower so they were all pressed together and the solid press of Altair’s arms were caught between their chests. He kissed him again and Altair managed to forget about his dick long enough to participate. It wasn’t the feverish-hot thing of before but it was serviceable with Altair’s hands stroking his dick and his long-long-legs wrapping around his body.

They kissed half-heartedly until Altair let go of his dick and grabbed his face and rolled them over again. Malik grabbed at his hips and Altair moaned into his mouth and they were kissing like they had been before the interlude of ridiculousness. 

“But you can’t stick that thing in me,” Altair said with his breath coming in hard pants. He was obviously disappointed by that. “You got lube?”

“Yeah,” Malik said. 

Altair nodded and Malik dug around the box by his bed until he found it. He expected (would have welcomed at this point) Altair to ask to top him and was confused when the man got on his elbows and knees instead. But then he was slicking the space between his thighs and Malik caught onto the idea and crawled up behind him. 

\--

At thirty-two, Altair had learned a great many things about sex (in general and specifically relating to himself) that he had not known at twenty two. The catastrophic difference between the memory of his younger self’s ignorant glee at trying any new thing and his older self’s decidedly rigid preferences was never so apparent as now. 

Malik was gracious (embarrassed on his behalf) and Altair was perfectly pleased to change the subject to anything other than the leviathan beast of a cock that was hidden away in Malik’s pants. “Why does Desmond feed you when your kids leave?” Malik asked.

Since they were not talking about the sex-disaster.

“Uh,” Altair said. The reheated casserole was better than average (or he was just more than willing to enjoy anything at this point). The TV was playing some action movie and Malik had been quietly eating and concentrating on it. The two of them awkward little pinballs avoiding touching one another for fear of (he didn’t even know). “Well, it was harder than I thought it was going to be to put my sons on a plane and watch them leave me for a week. It got easier as Sef got older but for those first couple of years, it was pretty hard.” 

“Yeah,” Malik said agreeably. 

The uncomfortable silence grew into low growl of white noise and Altair picked at the seam of his pants while he tried to work out something that he could say to bring any sort of relief. Something about how they probably shouldn’t ever try to have sex again, or how Malik was a great guy (and hot as hell except for his ridiculous dick) but it wasn’t a good idea. I know I should have thought this through before we got started just you know—well…

He glanced sideways at Malik who had gone all blank-stare at the TV. The poor guy looked like he was trying to summon an act of God to free him from the couch. Altair considered giving him a blow job (a task he enjoyed well enough with normal sized dicks) and then thought it would compound the insult. So he said, “you have to work in the morning?”

Malik turned to look at him as if the idea of using work as an excuse had never even occurred to him. He was simultaneously offended and grateful when he said, “not sure. If people keep calling out sick I will.”

“Probably need to get some sleep.”

“Yeah,” Malik agreed. “And you’ve been up since—four?”

“Yeah. I’m tired.” He was never good at lying. It was pretty high on the reasons that his long-lasting relationship involved nothing more involved that phone calls to announce mutual interest in sex. He got up off the couch and Malik got up with him, trailed after him the short distance to the door and hovered there with indecision. 

“Sleep well,” Malik said when the door was open and Altair was leaving. It was just so terrible that Altair could only nod and make a quick exit. 

\--

Malik did end up having to work (and better that than sitting at home stewing over the unexpected turn his almost relationship had taken). It was him-and-Kadar running cash registers while the rest of the short staff tried to unload the truck in the back and the manager ran around with a wet cough and runny eyes trying to be effective at her job. (Poor woman.)

“No wait,” Kadar said again. He was backward in his own little cashier cubby, back to any approaching customer with his tie on crooked and his shirt untucked. He had the distinct look of having only slept two hours before being sent off to fill in. His name tag said ‘Bobby Barrett’ and Malik didn’t even care enough to point out he shouldn’t steal people’s names. “Why are _you_ here?”

“Dad did not make it seem very optional when he called,” Malik said.

Kadar glanced around the store like he was making a point and then back at him. “Is he even paying you for this? I understand why I’m here. I haven’t forked my soul over to the family business yet but you have and there’s no reason to punish you anymore. Go home, snuggle with your elderly gentleman.”

Malik picked at a scratch on the counter by the cash register. “I don’t think that’s going to work out.”

“What?” Kadar asked. He darted across the space between them, hands on the edge of the counter and body leaning forward toward Malik with the most confidential look of desperate interest on his face. “Was he really gross? Was the sex bad?”

Malik huffed. “It was only technically sex. It was…awkward.”

“Because he’s old?”

“No not because he’s old. Would you shut up? He’s not old. He’s thirty two and he is as incredible everywhere as his arms and chest so no it was not because he was gross or old.”

Kadar looked stumped, relaxed back a little bit. The gears in his head obviously trying to work around to some conclusion that was eluding him. “Honestly, I can’t think of any other reason. You’re hot, you’ve been gagging for the chance so I can only assume you were down for anything he suggested—was it something weird? Like spanking or something? Did he want to choke you?”

Malik was not blushing because he was embarrassed, he was just turning red because Kadar would not shut up. He reached across the space between them and slapped his hand across Kadar’s mouth. “No,” he said. “It was my penis.”

At this Kadar pulled away to free his mouth and shouted, “what!” loud enough that anyone in the store could have heard them. “Are you kidding me?” was no less loud. But the approaching footsteps of a customer cut him off before he could shout anything else. Malik shooed him back to his register while he rang up the customer. But Kadar was back again, scooting into the tiny square of space. He turned Malik to face him and said (with utter seriousness), “but I thought you gay guys had a biological imperative to crave big dicks.”

“Apparently not,” Malik said.

Kadar was just so offended. “Has it gotten bigger?” He was staring at Malik’s crotch with utter fascination, apparently unaware how not okay it was. Malik slapped him and he looked back at his face. “Ok, well—that’s not impossible to work around, right?”

“Apparently it is.”

“No, see because you can bottom and then he can just appreciate the aesthetic value of your—hey stop pushing me.” But Malik shoved and kicked him until he was out of the tiny little space for cashiers. “I’m trying to help you out!”

“I’m leaving. Count my drawer, don’t fuck it up.” Then he left, because he could, because he was only there to watch Kadar anyway. Sooner or later the kid was going to have to learn how to work without Malik around.

\--

“I’m calling Maria,” Desmond said almost instantly. 

“You asked,” Altair said from where he was hiding on the couch. “Why do you ask if you don’t want me to answer?”

“I asked why you weren’t at your neighbor’s house fucking and you were the one that told me about his dick. I admit that I did ask what was wrong with a big dick but then you _explained_ it to me.”

“I had to listen to you work out your heterosexual feelings about getting pegged,” Altair said. “The least you can do is tell me what I should do about this. You’ve actually dated people. What do you do when you like them and they are hot and you take their clothes off and—”

“There’s an unexpected massive cock?” Desmond said. He was holding his phone out in front of his face, running his thumb through his contacts. “That has never happened to me, thankfully. You could ask Ezio. I’m pretty sure he didn’t realize he was dating that one guy until they were both naked.”

“You know what I mean,” Altair said. “I don’t like big dicks. He was so perfect, Desmond. Why did he have to have a horse cock?”

At that point, Desmond found Maria’s number and had the phone to his ear while it rang. “I couldn’t hear you over the sound of my heterosexual disinterest in your problems. But assuming that I could hear you whining about how big dicks offend you, why can’t you just—top? Or do things not involving his dick in any part of your body.”

“I can,” Altair said. 

“I’m not sure I believe you at this point.”

Altair threw a pillow at Desmond who only just knocked it out of the way before it hit him in the face. Desmond gave him the finger just seconds before Maria must have answered the phone because he was saying, “hello Maria. Am I speaker phone? Are you busy? I need you to counsel this idiot.”

Whatever Maria said must have been funny because Desmond laughed and then handed the phone over to him. Maria sounded sleepy-still with a grate of displeasure at being awoken in her voice and the distinct pattern of noise that meant she was making coffee. “I’d assume injury but it would be Ezio calling not Desmond. So sex problems, then? What’s wrong with your baby face neighbor?”

“He’s got an eleven inch dick,” Altair said.

Desmond spit his coffee all over himself and coughed until he was blue wheezing, “you didn’t say that before.” 

“Is that an exaggeration or a fact? You know what—it’s probably accurate give or take a half-inch. You were always really good at eyeballing measurements. Explain to me why this is a problem. Sounds like an enviable problem to have to me.”

“You would think that,” Altair said. 

“I’m just saying Sef has only been here eighteen hours and he’s already told me everything he knows about your neighbor-slash-boy-toy and Darim has even thrown in a few anecdotes about how cute the kid is. So I need you to march your skinny ass over and take one for the team.”

Altair had no idea why he trusted his children to this woman. He watched Desmond cleaning up the spray of coffee that was all over his shirt and the floor and slouched further into his couch. “Just to be clear here, I’m not afraid of the dick. I have had big dicks before—”

“That big?” Maria interrupted. The perk of interest far more awake than the drone of her useless advice. 

“Yes—well, close enough. Have you?”

“Ten, maybe? Is it girthy? I like a heavy dick is all I’m saying.”

“Yes it is,” Altair said. “Dicks like that—you can’t do anything but like hold onto something and pray for the best. I like to retain full range of motion while I’m getting fucked, you know? You can’t do that with dicks like his.”

Maria sighed into the phone. “This is a serious thing for you.”

“Yes.”

“Sexual compatibility is extremely important to a good relationship. You should dump him, sell the house and move. After that you can contact your sons and begin the long drawn out process of having Darim hate you for your choices and attempt to regain Sef’s love. I wouldn’t blame them if they never wanted to see you again.”

“Now you are being ridiculous.”

Maria made a sweet little noise like a hiss and a laugh. “No, you’re being ridiculous. I know you. Your brain probably just stopped functioning when you saw his dick and you made a fool out of yourself and now you’re going to hide in your house until Monday when you have to go to work and pretend nothing happened. Except it did. The very least you owe this guy is an explanation as to why you’re going to avoid him forever.”

Altair sneered into the phone. “I’d rather just go take one for the team.”

“All I know is you need to fix it before the boys come back. Break up or make up but get it done.” Then she made a kissing noise at him. “Love you, the boys are up.” Then she hung up on him and Altair threw the phone at Desmond who was sitting again.

\--

Malik did not go directly home. He went to his Mother’s house and saw his son. Luxuriated in the lectures about how he was too young to be taking on so much responsibility. Played blocks with his son in the playroom full of toys they’d left behind when they moved out and rocked him to sleep in the old rocker that his mother had rocked him to sleep in. When laid Tazim down in his crib (the new one his Mother bought) and stood there watching him sleep feeling kind of miserable and useless.

“Your brother said I should keep Tazim for a few days,” his Mother said when he came out of the room again. She was cleaning up the mess of toys with that same inexhaustible energy he had never managed to match. “He did not tell me why. I can only assume you have met someone.”

Malik made a dismissive noise. “I thought I did, not sure now.”

“Do not rush into things, son. You are so young.” 

If only that was his problem. He rubbed his palms against his work pants and looked fondly at the door, “would you mind keeping Tazim until tomorrow?”

Mother straightened up and cupped his face in her two hands, kissed his forehead and then rubbed the lipstick away from his skin. She nodded her head. “Go, be young and stupid. Do not make any more grandbabies.”

Yeah that wasn’t going to happen. He thanked her and went, drove around, picked up food somewhere and when he could not avoid it any longer went home and let himself into his lonely, miserable, solitary house. Altair was obviously at home, obviously also alone, and that made Malik feel even worse. 

An hour dragged by, Malik flipped channels, ate, sat around feeling sorry for himself. 

He heard a car pull up in his drive and sighed but didn’t get up to open the door for Kadar. He flipped through another fifty channels, waited for his brother to show up and when he didn’t, got up and went to look out the front window. Kadar’s car was empty and his brother was nowhere to be seen. 

“Ah, fuck,” he said because the idiot had gone to Altair’s house.

\--

It was important to note that Kadar was seventeen. It was equally important to note that Altair had never made it habit to have graphic sexual conversations with any kid, much less the kid brother of the man he had disastrously had sex with the night before.

“Ok, so here it is,” Kadar said when he invited himself right into Altair’s pity party. “My brother can’t control the size of his dick. I’ve seen it, man and I understand where you’re coming from but you hurt his feelings and that’s not cool. I don’t support this,” he motioned his hands around to encompass Altair’s entire being and general surroundings, “but he seems to really like you and that’s a big deal because ever since he found out about Tazim he hasn’t liked anyone. He told me how you went and picked his sick kid up from daycare. Darim says you guys are always eating together. Clearly you connect on some age-defying spiritual level.”

“This really isn’t your—” 

“Shush,” Kadar snapped at him. “This is my business because he’s my brother and I had to put up with his moping face and then he walked out on work. Malik has been working at that stupid store since he was _twelve_ , he worked through the flu and mono and that one time he broke his arm. He has never walked out—including when Tazim’s Mom went into labor—until now.”

Altair was going to say something about how he was sorry that was true but it wasn’t directly his fault and there was only so much he could do about it.

“And man, I get it. Who wants that much of anything in your butt—even if you like it—but you don’t have to be a dick about it, right? Malik is still a good guy.”

Altair huffed a sigh.

“Also! Darim is going to be so pissed at you. I’ve spent a lot of time with him and he thinks you’re disgusting but he also said that he was pretty sure you hadn’t ever loved anyone before. That’s approval. Like how he says that Tazim is a pest and he doesn’t want any more annoying little brothers but then he bought all these books to read to him when he’s here? Yeah. Darim is going to be pissed at you about this.”

At that point there was a knock on his door and Malik opened it. He glared at his brother with steely, deadly coldness and Kadar smiled back like he wasn’t even worried. The boy just sauntered out with a sweet kiss blown back at his brother. Malik was stuck in the doorway with a pained look on his face. “Sorry,” he said, “about whatever he just said. I’m going to go kill him.”

Altair groaned and got up to his feet, “wait,” he said. Since there was really no avoiding this topic any longer. “I—reacted poorly last night.”

Malik’s face said that was an understatement but the man said nothing.

“I really like you,” Altair said. “I—just have gotten really set in my ways about sex.”

“Are you breaking up with me?” Malik asked.

“No?” That sounded so stupid he wasn’t even convinced himself. “No,” he said again. “Just, I’m not sure what to do with your penis.”

At that point, Malik shut the door and walked over closer to him. He had the look of little sleep, less patience and a great deal of lingering embarrassment. “We’re both adults,” Malik-the-twenty-two-year-old said to him. “Let’s just be frank about this. I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do. I’m not _set in my ways_ but there are a few things that I know I like. If you’re unwilling to even try them then we should break up.”

There was definitely something attractive about Malik’s authoritative tone of voice. “What things?”

“I like topping,” Malik said.

Because-of-course he would. Because of-course he could be attractive, smart, funny, good with his kid (and accepting of Altair’s), successful in life, young and _a top._ It would have been perfect (utterly, shamefully perfect) if not for his literal anaconda-like dick. The sound Altair made at those words was nearly as embarrassing as everything he’d said and done the night before. 

“Now I’m confused,” Malik said. 

“You’re just so perfect,” Altair said, “your brother called me a dick.”

“Well, he’s biased because he likes me and thinks you’re a cradle-robber. What exactly is your problem with my dick?”

“Have you ever been fucked by something that size?” Altair asked him. “You can feel it in your backbone, man. Like hours after. Forget blow jobs.”

Malik just looked so serious and so concentrated on what he was saying, standing there with his hands on his hips and his eyebrows in furrows. Altair wanted to kiss him and Malik interrupted that thought by saying, “there is literally an encyclopedia of things we can do that don’t involve penetration.”

“But I like penetration,” Altair said. 

At this point, Malik’s concentrated stare turned surly. “But not my dick.” He turned around, “fine,” and made for the door but Altair grabbed his arm and pulled him back. There was probably something to say here that would make the whole situation slightly more tolerable. Malik came back all anger-and-grabbing-hands, pulling him down to kiss him. Altair liked kissing him, pulled him closer. 

Malik pushed him and Altair fell backward onto the couch. Malik pulled his leg and was there between his legs kissing him again with two hands on his ass squeezing pulling at him to lift him up far enough for Malik to fuck against. There was urgency-and-anger in the driving grind of Malik’s body against his. Altair just moaned into his mouth and fisted his thick-dark-hair as his eyes fluttered closed and he put one leg around Malik to encourage him. 

“Shit,” Malik gasped. He pulled back far enough to pull his own shirt off and Altair wiggled out of his own. “How do you feel about topping?”

“How do you feel about bottoming?” Altair asked. Then he was being kissed again. Malik’s right hand caught on the solid edge of the couch and his left squeezing at Altair’s thigh as he rocked down against him. The hardening weight of his incredibly large dick a noticeable ridge of intent. Oh-but-it just felt so nice to have Malik there on top of him, kissing him and grabbing at his ass. 

“At this point,” Malik said with his breath all in pants and hisses. “I don’t care. But if I take my pants off and you start saying stupid shit again I’m dumping you.” 

“Fair enough,” Altair said agreeably. He pushed Malik back and rolled off the couch. “Allow me to show you my bedroom.” Then they all but ran through his cramped little house to his bedroom (the smallest of the three) and Malik looked around with faux appreciation before stripping his pants off. His mammoth dick visible pleased to be freed from the terrible confines of the hellishly tight pants. “This isn’t stupid,” Altair said as he dug his condoms-and-lube out of top drawer of his dresser. “But how _do_ you walk?”

“That is stupid,” Malik told him. “You do better when you don’t talk. Consider not talking for this portion of our relationship.” 

Altair took his own pants off, crawled up onto the bed with Malik and sat on his knees indecisively. Malik (younger, less worried about the things he didn’t know yet and in general far more eager to have sex) dragged him down and kissed him again. “I have to talk though,” Altair said. “How do you—?”

“You are killing me,” Malik said. His dick shared none of those sentiments. He found the lube and grabbed one of Altair’s hands to slick up two of his fingers and then pushed them down between his own spread thighs. “Now kiss me because you’re good at that and when I’m ready, I’ll roll over.” 

“Ok,” Altair said. He kissed him because he liked kissing him. He liked everything about the feeling of Malik’s body against his, the smoother stretch of his body and the eager youth of his arching up beneath him. He fucking _adored_ the angry-little-moans Malik made when Altair’s fingers slipped one-then-two inside of him. He loved the way Malik was fucking up against his stomach and wiggling back against his fingers. 

Oh-and-then Malik was pushing him back and rolling onto his gut, up on his knees with his shoulder’s low and his back in a delicious bow. Altair managed the condom and lube. Malik’s voice was an undertone of shock-and-praise when Altair pushed into him.

“Wasn’t sure you could do it,” Malik said from beneath him.

“Shut up,” Altair said. He turned Malik’s head so he could kiss him again. It wasn’t a fantastic attempt at sex but it was better than their last failed attempt. Malik let him try to figure out a rhythm for approximately a minute and then told him exactly what to do (which worked for Altair, who was a fan of helpful suggestions) until Altair was fucking into him with two hands grabbing his hips and Malik stuttering happy little moans.

\--

Malik wasn’t lying when he said he wasn’t averse to bottoming. He just didn’t prefer it above other things. He’d forgotten the exact reasons why while Altair was fucking him (because that part he liked) and then he was left with the slick-squishy feeling that no amount of soap and water seemed to wash away. Altair, unlike the last dickface that Malik bottomed for, didn’t smile smugly at him about it.

“Well that was better,” Malik said.

Altair laughed. He was still shirtless (a damn good look for him), throwing a pizza in the oven before searching through his freezer for something to accompany it. After he’d found a cookie sheet to cook the fries on he said, “I haven’t been that bad at sex since I was a teenager.”

“Me either,” Malik said. “These past four years have been really educational.”

Altair spread the fries even on the cookie sheet and just glared at him. “I get enough shit about your age from my son and your brother. If you start in, I’m dumping you.”

“If we can’t figure out how to have sex with one another, we don’t stand much of a chance anyway,” Malik said. Because it was practical and logical. Sexual compatibility was important and Altair was seemed perfectly compatible with Malik but not his dick. 

Altair put the food in the oven and then picked up his glass of water. He leaned back against the counter (looking recently debauched and attractive) and looked at Malik like he was trying to solve a difficult puzzle. “You are a terrible bottom,” Altair said. “I haven’t had that many but you were just terrible.”

“I was not.”

“Yes. Yes you were. You’d make a great top. I’d fuck you for days if you were a top, but you’re a terrible bottom.” He took another drink of water and then set a timer on the stove and walked over to kick Malik’s chair away from the table. He licked his lips as he got on his knees and leaned forward between the spread of Malik’s knees. His hands were pulling at Malik’s pants button as he looked up at his face. “You still young enough to get hard again?”

Malik was still young enough to have his brains drop straight down to his dick in a split second. “Uh,” he said. He lifted up when Altair’s hands pulled at his pants and was sitting bare-assed on the hard kitchen chair. “What did you have in mind?” The question was mostly to the top of Altair’s head because the man himself was already looking down at his dick. Inoffensively soft (at the moment, but not for long), Altair seemed to find it intriguing. 

“Just want to try something,” Altair mumbled at him (or to his dick). 

“Do I get to orgasm regardless of how this experiment turns out?” Malik asked. But Altair’s was curled around his dick, lifting it up away from its indifferent flop as he settled lower on his knees. Then his mouth—all generous warm lips and slick wet tongue—was closing around the tip of his dick. It was nothing that he’d done before because one-hundred-percent of the time he’d ever gotten a blow job he’d already been hard. His hand pulled at Altair’s hair instinctively but the hummed annoyed sound he got in return made him loosen his hand. “I just—what are you doing?” Another hummed noise vibrated through his entire body as Altair sucked his dick a little deeper into his mouth. 

Malik was getting hard again, couldn’t have prevented it even if he’d wanted to, and Altair’s tongue and his wicked-red-lips kept right on slurping at him with thoughtful little hums and moans. When Malik was almost-completely-hard and Altair’s mouth was plumped from dragging across his dick, Altair sat back and licked his lips. He kept stroking him, looked up at Malik’s face and smiled. 

“So?” Malik said.

“I don’t know what to do with you now that you’re hard,” Altair said. “But that was fun.”

Malik had a lot of ideas about what Altair could do with him now that he was hard. Altair kept stroking him as he licked his obscene lips and considered his options. “You could let me come on your face.” Because it was a thought that he’d had.

Altair looked up at him, smile all pulled out of shape but clearly pleased by the suggestion in a way that did nothing but encourage Malik to want it more. “Would that help you feel better about your dick?”

“It’d help me feel better about everything,” Malik said. “This is a thing you’d really do? You’d let me come on your face?”

Altair was still pulling on his dick, hands slick only with the spit leftover from when he’d been sucking on it. He nodded his head (and that was best because he really did say stupid things). Malik was sitting down already or he might have fallen over. He wasn’t extremely practiced in the art of sex (being a single dad at twenty ruined a lot of his chances) but he’d had enough partners to know that facials weren’t always so well received. “See now, if you looked like that when I was fucking you it would have been better.”

“Like what?” Malik asked between one inhaled breath and the next.

“Stupefied with lust.” Altair regarded his dick again and after a moment’s pause ducked his head to suck on the tip. Malik did not pull on his hair but stroked it with his fingers and followed the slight up-down of Altair’s head as he sucked at the top two inches of his dick and stroked upward from the bottom again-and-again. Malik was lifting his hips off the chair and gasping for breath, one hand hanging onto the table at his side when the chair tipped. 

“Altair,” he managed to say in the moment before he came (again, very soon after the first time) and it ricocheted through his body all pleasure-and-pain. Altair was there on his knees with his mouth in a pleased-red-smile and little dots of white come on his face that he was rubbing at with his thumb. He looked at Malik’s come and then licked it off his finger and Malik had never wanted to fuck anyone as much as he wanted to fuck Altair in that moment. 

He couldn’t (yet, maybe ever) but he slid off the chair and kissed him hard-and-fast and knocked them both to the ground. Altair’s mouth was hot and tasted like dick and his hands were damp and clutching at Malik’s shoulders. “Yeah, I’m not that young anymore,” Altair said to him. “I need food.”

“Good idea,” Malik said. “Wash your hands first.” 

\--

Maria called him at midnight, long after Malik had eaten half the pizza and fries, told him all about how he’d been working at the family stores since he was twelve (true story apparently) and how he got mono from this girl at school. (My Mom was furious.) Then he gave Altair a very nice blowjob and a sweet kiss goodbye and left to sleep in his own house. 

“What?” Altair growled into the phone (he’d been sleeping, at midnight, since he worked for a living). “Someone dying?”

“Well Desmond called me at like six in the morning, I figured I’d call and wake you up to talk about your boyfriend’s dick. So did you hide from him all day or have you attempted to be a mature adult and fix the problem?”

“No, his kid brother lectured me about how I hurt his feelings and we had sex a couple of times.” Altair was laying mostly on his stomach, stretched across his bed and working on waking up enough to care about Maria not to fall asleep while talking.

“You got over that fast.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Oh,” she said sadly. “Remind me again what the specific problem is.”

“Have you ever watched gay porn?” Altair mumbled. Because he was _tired_ and he’d already explained the whole thing too many times. “And there’s like the general stuff like Corbin Fisher or something and those guys are all active and gasping and moaning and doing the yeah, yeah fuck that ass and all that?”

“Do you say that?”

“No.”

“Ok, just checking. Yes, I may have seen some.”

“Right,” Altair rolled onto his back. “Then there’s the other stuff like ‘big black cock destroys twink’ and that shit? And the whole point is how massive the guy’s dick is and how it hurts and the poor twink can’t walk straight after?”

“No I haven’t seen that one but I’m going to look it up and call you back.” Then she hung up. Altair frowned at the phone but dropped it back on the bedside table and fell back to sleep. It was glorious (as glorious as any sleep can be) until the phone rang at four thirty in the morning and it was Maria again. “Ok,” she said as soon as he grunted into the phone. “I have looked up and watched big dick porn and I understand the problem. But, I didn’t like fucking you in the beginning and we made that work out in the end. Maybe you just have to get used to it.”

“One does not get used to dicks like that.”

“Pussy,” Maria said. “I’m just saying as the woman who took your virginity, took advantage of your horny teenage years and then had to watch you turn into a raging cock slut that this is not an insurmountable obstacle for you. I remember the big semen freak out of six years ago.”

Altair had forgotten that brief and terrible phase in his life. “He came on my face,” he said.

“See, you got over that. Now have a couple beers, invite the man over for dinner and get dicked. You’ll feel so much better.” This was the woman that he had children with. The one that was currently in charge of their well-being. The one they might even spend the whole summer with.

“Sleeping again,” he said.

“If you don’t do what I say I’m going to find his number and call him,” she said sweetly. He hung up then and put the phone under a pile of magazines he’d never read.

\--

Tazim was clingy-as-hell when Malik brought him home after being away for a few days. He managed to pry the child off his body long enough to change out of his work clothes but Tazim refused to be left on the outside of the bathroom while he used it and absolutely could not be talked out of sitting in the kitchen banging on things while Malik cooked. They were in the middle of a screaming (mostly Tazim while Malik failed to make him stop by coaxing and bribing) war over the high chair when Altair let himself in. 

He looked at Tazim’s pitiful, tear-streaked, red-cheeked face and held out his hands for him. Tazim was all tears and pitiful grasping fingers as he wound his hands in Altair’s shirt and glared back at Malik for thinking he ought to sit in his own chair. Altair stroked his back and hummed at him. “He’s right though,” he said at length. “You have to sit in your own chair.”

Tazim looked at the chair and kicked his leg out at it.

“I guess I’ll put you down then.” He made it half an inch down before Tazim was climbing up his shoulders and screaming. “Chair?” The boy made an ugly face but allowed himself to be put into his chair and accepted his food with minimal grace. “Grandma?” Altair said.

“How can you tell?” Malik flopped into his own chair. “There’s more in there if you’re interested.” He wasn’t even expecting Altair to come around and kiss him but he didn’t complain when it happened. It was nice after the recently frustration of stormy toddler nonsense. “How was work?”

“Long,” Altair said. “Finished the project though. Now I have a day or two to sit around and do some paperwork before we begin on our next big project.” He came out of the kitchen again with a plate and a glass of water. 

Tazim threw a green bean at him and then smiled at his own magnificence. He picked up another one and Altair said, “throw it to me.” Tazim looked shocked at the very notion and then picked up another one in his other hand and threw it toward Altair who tried to catch it in his mouth at the same time he took the plate off the tray of the high chair. “Sorry,” he said in the next minute. 

“No,” Malik said. “It’s fine.” His beloved little son looked at his empty tray and then up at him with slack-jawed shock. “He did it,” Malik said. Tazim turned back to look at Altair and slapped his hand on this tray in objection. 

“You weren’t eating. You have to eat not throw stuff.” 

Malik dropped a handful of beans on the tray and Tazim vengefully stuffed them in his mouth. Altair made faces at him and Malik enjoyed the momentary peace.


	3. Chapter 3

Altair washed the dishes while Malik gave Tazim a bath and put him to bed. He wiped down the table and swept the floor and wandered out to flop onto the couch too. Malik came out (eventually) and sat next to him. 

“How are your boys?”

“From the brief messages I got from them, they are having fun and don’t care about ever returning. Maria has the whole week off so they were at the beach today and they’re going to go to some theme park tomorrow.” He stretched and looked back down the hallway toward the sound of lullabies. “Is he asleep?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, I was going to proposition you with sex.” Just not exactly the sex that Maria commanded him to initiate. Altair got off the couch and on his knees and Malik’s legs spread as a reflexive-invitation. “I need an answer.” 

“Oh. Yes.”

Altair lifted up long enough to kiss him—briefly—and then settled back on his knees. Malik was stroking his hair (a distracting habit of his) as Altair rubbed his face against the inside of his thigh. He also helpfully lifted his hips so his pants could be pulled down and made a delightful array of noises as Altair worked on his soft-cock blow job skills. 

\--

Tuesday, Malik spent most of the day trying not to assume he was going to get laid after dinner and consequently had to redo most of his work. By the time he’d managed to escape work, he was later than normal to picking up Tazim (causing both the boy and the ladies who cared for him to be worried and inquisitive) and late getting home. Altair was already there and Malik pulled Tazim out of his car seat and invited himself over for dinner. (Since he did the cooking the night before.)

Altair fed them chicken, pasta and peas. Malik washed his dishes for him while Altair did toddler aerobics with Tazim in the living room. The two of them shirtless in front of the TV moving with very much the same uncoordinated lack of grace. 

Malik stood in the doorway with soap-scented hands and watched them until he was discovered. Altair didn’t even blush but smile at him all white-teeth-and-unashamed amusement. “You have to try this,” Altair said to him.

Tazim turned, discovered Malik watching him, and ran over to drag him into the terrible mockery of exercise. Altair said, “the sooner you give up the idea of shame, the happier your life will be.”

“That does not make me feel less ridiculous about this.” But Malik was a good sport about it. Tazim watched the two of them with fascination and joined in when he had assimilated the idea that his father was capable of being ridiculous.

Altair didn’t follow them home when Malik went to put Tazim to sleep but he was there when Malik came out of the room. He was standing in the hallway looking impressively casual up to the moment Malik stepped out of the room.

“Sex?” Altair said.

“I’m twenty two. If I ever say no to sex, you have either fucked up so badly you need to immediately start groveling or I’m dying.” Then he grabbed Altair by the shirt front and dragged him into his bedroom. They made out like horny teenagers, all rough grinding and groping hands. Altair was on his back beneath him, content to stay there and moaning happily in encouragement to every minute motion of Malik’s body against his. “Clothes need to go,” Malik said (all panting and rough). 

Altair nodded at him and they wiggled and wriggled out of their clothes. Malik sucked little pink marks into Altair’s skin as he worked his way down his fantastic-fucking-chest. Altair was stretching sideways away from him, digging around the top box that was sitting even with the bed before he pulled the bottle of lube out from under the assortment of other crap. “Don’t get too excited. I just want your fingers,” he said. 

Malik did not whine, wheedle or complain. He manfully accepted the task given to him and finger fucked Altair until the man was gasping his name in praise and adoration in quiet little undertones. Malik had intended to blow him but had settled into place with one hand on Altair’s thigh and the other three-fingers deep inside of him watching the fantastic display of utter shamelessness unfolding before him. He only remembered that he should have been doing something with Altair’s cock when the man took the matter into his own hands (literally) and came nearly instantly. Then he sagged into the bed happily and motioned Malik up to kiss him.

“You were right,” Malik told him. “I’m a terrible bottom.”

There was sweat on Altair’s face and his smile was feral and pleased as he wrapped his arms and legs around Malik and pulled him down tight-and-close. His kisses were sweet little promises when he said, “that’s nothing. Wait until you get your dick in me.”

Malik _groaned_ and Altair kissed his nose and rolled him over onto his back. “Tease.”

“Find someone to watch your baby Friday,” Altair said into his throat. “I will deliver on my promise. At least the one time.” And he barely even had to get a hand on Malik before he was coming at the very thought of _that_. 

\--

Wednesday, Ezio showed up with Thai takeout (enough for a small army) seemed to be confused by the lack of the usual children and the addition of a smaller (cuter) one and the adult stranger. “I know one is Malik and one is Tazim but I cannot remember which is which.” He was charming though, overdressed for casual dinner (as usual).

“Malik,” Altair said, “Tazim.” 

“Pleased to meet you,” Ezio said. Then he finished spreading out the takeout he’d brought while he started in about how the young lady that had given him the food over the counter and put her number in the bag and how attractive and lovely she was. Tazim climbed onto a chair to sit on the table and poked at the boxes and containers. “Plate,” Ezio said to the boy.

Altair handed Tazim an old plastic plate he’d had since Sef was a toddler and set three other plates on the table. Ezio sat in the chair Tazim had climbed and continued his story about the attractive woman and his conundrum about what to do over it.

“Are you dating anyone?” Malik asked.

Ezio blushed and motioned a general ‘maybe’ hand gesture in the air. He was dishing food onto Tazim’s plate by the spoonful as the boy picked up pieces and stuck them in his mouth and made up his mind about whether he liked it or not. “I may be in a committed relationship with Leonardo.”

“May be?” Altair said. Malik was motioning toward his kid so Altair reached through the piles of food and grabbed Tazim by the back of the pants to drag him closer. Malik thanked him with a nod and put his son in the booster seat by his own chair. Tazim shrieked and Ezio pushed his plate to him without missing a beat. “You have been dating this man for two years.”

Ezio laughed. “Yes, but I only found out about six months ago.”

“How do you do that?” Malik asked. It was the wrong thing to ask because Ezio could tell a story but he liked to tell the story in _detail_ and the whole delightful affair of how he met Leonardo because his mother commissioned art from him through the startling moment that he found himself stupidly in love with Leonardo despite his staunch insistence that he was heterosexual took about seven hours to tell. 

“Denial,” Altair summed up for Malik. “Leonardo is in a committed relationship with Ezio. We’re not entirely sure if it goes both ways yet. I don’t know why you don’t just give in and marry the guy.”

“Breasts,” Ezio said. “I like them. I am drawn to them. I miss them constantly when they are absent. I’m also partial to vagina—sorry,” he said to Malik who didn’t look that concerned by the words. “I just do not understand how anyone could not love women. They are so—” Here is where he broke down into random noises and hand motions that one assumed added up to a general appreciation of females. “If Leonardo were a woman, I would have married her the day I met her.”

“That’s almost romantic,” Altair said.

“But how do you date someone for two years without realizing it?” Malik said.

Ezio laughed and reached over to clap him on the shoulder. “I will tell you,” he said. And then it started.

Four hours later, Altair was out on the porch with Tazim asleep (and drooling) against his chest and Ezio and Malik were laughing like idiots inside. It was after-dark late and Altair was suddenly lonesome as hell for his own kids in a way that almost never happened anymore. He didn’t even necessarily want them as the grown pests that they’d become but as the sweet-round babies they had been at Tazim’s age. 

Malik came out with a laugh still caught in his smile trailing off all sleepy and quiet. “I can’t figure out if it’s messed up to be attracted to you holding my son.”

Altair smiled. He was rubbing his hand up and down Tazim’s back as the boy snoozed sleepily against him. “Well, if it helps you to know, Maria was especially turned on by me holding Darim while he slept.”

“Are you coming over tonight?” Malik asked.

Altair turned his head so he could listen for Ezio moving around inside. “He won’t even notice I’m gone,” he said. 

\--

Malik waited until Thursday to call his stupid brother and tell him (not ask him) that he was coming over Friday to watch Tazim overnight at his own house for him. Kadar was on his lunch break at high school whining about how he had better things to do. The background chatter of hundreds of high schoolers adding the appropriate ambiance to the moment. 

He got off earlier, picked Tazim up early and took him to a park. 

At home, he made grilled cheese (because he was lazy and he wanted to) and green beans and they ate out at the little table by the couch while they watched the news. Tazim helped him throw the dishes in the sink and the trash in the trash. It was six-thirty and Malik was rubbing shampoo into Tazim’s hair before he let himself feel ever so slightly disappointed that Altair hadn’t shown up. He hummed to himself and Tazim splashed water in the tub and offered him a cup full of sudsy water. 

“Thanks,” he said and tipped it over his head. His curls flattened when they got wet and ran down the back of his neck and the sides of his face. His mother liked to tell him that Tazim’s hair was too long and Malik liked to ignore her but he’d have to address the problem eventually. 

Out of the bath, into pajamas and Malik read his son a book and rocked him to sleep. He stayed in his room with the soft-lullaby music, rocking Tazim long after he’d fallen asleep. The sound of the front door opening pulled him out of the drowsy state he’d gotten himself into and Altair stood in the doorway looking tired and starved. 

“Hm,” he said. “That is a good look.”

Malik smiled and got up to put Tazim in his crib because his brain was filling up with dirty things he didn’t necessarily want to be thinking while he was holding his child. “Everything okay?” Malik asked.

“Yeah,” Altair said (but didn’t make it sound believable). “The boys called. It’s Thursday so Darim has to complain about everything wrong because he doesn’t want to leave his Mom and Sef has to talk for six hours because he gets anxious.” He rubbed his hand through his hair, ruffled it up and let it fall flat again. 

It didn’t occur to Malik often (enough) that Altair had been someone’s father for fifteen years and that his sons were halfway to adulthood. The idea of it, the very notion of having been a parent for _so long_ was an awe-inspiring and frightening. “Are they alright?” and what a stupid thing to ask.

“Yeah,” Altair said. “They’ll be fine. For your own sake, take nothing either of them says when they come home too personally. Darim especially.”

“I won’t. Did you eat?”

“Yeah.” Then Altair pulled him forward by the belt loops and put his arm around him with a sighing sound. “How was work?”

“Good,” Malik said into the little space between their mouths. He leaned up to kiss Altair as his hands rested against his hips and the drifting lazy sound of lullabies added a soothing soundtrack. 

\--

Friday started with his ex-girlfriend baby-Mama calling him at five AM. “Hey,” he said. He was half-asleep but completely-aware that last night’s four hour phone call from his sons was just the first of many steps of the process. He stretched in his bed and sat up with his back against the headboard.

“Hey,” Maria said back. “I wasn’t going to call you.”

Altair crossed his legs and looked at the alarm clock with a regretful frown over the time. “You say that every year. Every year I tell you that I fully encourage you to call.”

“I don’t think Sef wants to visit this summer,” she said quietly. There was a hushed-hurt in her voice, one that she didn’t share with him that often. “We talked about it a little but he didn’t seem very interested in talking to me about it. He kept changing the subject and I didn’t want to push.”

Yeah. “He’s got a couple of months to think about it still. Sometimes he just has to think about it a little longer. What about Darim?”

“Darim said he’d visit me. He won’t come without Sef,” she said. It had been proven over the past ten years of their lives that Darim-stayed-with-Sef in some unspoken guardianship of his annoying baby brother. Altair had a list of things he’d wished he’d done differently as a parent, and a pile of regrets for the things he hadn’t been able to do for his kids (especially in the beginning when he was overwhelmed by his own incompetence and idiocy) but he was proud of how they protected one another when it mattered. 

“Your son loves you,” Altair said. 

“You don’t have to make me feel better,” she said quietly. 

Altair sighed. “Someone should. Maria, Sef is more like you than he is like me. Don’t argue with me. I live with them, I have known them since birth and regardless of how you think Darim takes after you, you are wrong. Sef is exactly like you were at that age. He’s obsessive, determined and emotionally ignorant. He comes across all well-rounded and angelic but he has no ability to express himself in words. Everything that you’re feeling right now—like you haven’t been a good enough mother, like he doesn’t love you, like you don’t know if you should push or let him go without a fight—those are the things he’s feeling. Except you’re the adult and he’s the kid. Sef loves you and he will always love you.”

“Hm,” Maria said. There was the vague tone of tears in the noise. “What happened with your big-dicked neighbor?”

“He changes the subject just like you too,” Altair added. “Malik and I are still dating.”

“You get fucked yet?”

“No. Tonight.”

“Oh you set a date for it, that’s nice. Are you going to light candles and throw rose petals around as well?”

Altair scowled at her. “No. I just didn’t want to have to work the morning after.”

Maria laughed at him. “You really are making a big deal out of this for no reason. I wish you all the best tonight. Send me a text if you and your ass survive.”

“I hate you,” he said sweetly.

“I know. Call your sons before you get started climbing that mountain.”

“Hate.”

She blew him kisses through the phone and hung up before he could say anything else. 

\--

Malik could not manage to completely focus on work. In fact, work seemed like an arbitrary obligation to him. Something that he really didn’t _need_ to do. That sort of thinking would have gotten him lectured by his Father for hours-on-end. But Malik spent most of the day staring at the clock waiting for it to be over and then left early.

Tazim was excited to see him and the ladies that took care of him were full of stories about how adorable he’d been that day. The boy ate it up as he sat on Malik’s arm with his blanket wrapped up in his arms and his curls full of lunch. “Why are you only cute for other people?” he asked.

Tazim tipped his head to bump it against his and smiled oh-so-angelically. But Malik had seen the kid break down in screaming fits over a sippy cup full of juice. He knew the truth. Still, he thanked the ladies and told them to have a lovely weekend and went to the store to buy Kadar survival food for the night. Pizza, junk and soda that their Mother would have skinned him for consuming in mass quantities. 

It was barely four-thirty when he got home but Kadar was already at his house hooking up his game system to the new TV, grumbling over the various wires. “Don’t even say it,” he said when Malik looked at him. “I am fully aware that watching TV while your kid eats magazines does not constitute baby-sitting. But his bedtime is seven-thirty and mine is sometime after midnight.” 

Malik shook his head. Tazim went over to help by picking up the ends of fallen cords and trying to eat them. Kadar pulled them out of his grip and started a dialogue with the boy as if he were capable of talking at all. 

“So, like, without you graphically describing anything, why exactly do you need a baby-sitter for the whole night anyway?” Kadar came into the kitchen with Tazim on his shoulders and went through the bags of junk. “You’re my favorite brother.”

“Your only brother,” Malik reminded him. “I plan on having a lot of sex. Don’t let him eat any of this.”

“I wouldn’t. When are you abandoning us anyway?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to go change.” And he took a shower too before he got dressed. By the time he came out again it was five and Kadar was on the front porch leaning against the house.

“I can’t believe you betrayed me, kid,” Kadar was saying. “After I’ve been so good to you! After all the time we’ve spent together and you leave me just like that.”

“He only likes me because he thinks I have Darim,” Altair said. He was wearing his dusty work clothes still with Tazim happily hanging onto his hands as he walked up his legs with all of the concentration in his pudgy little body. “He’ll be back tomorrow, Tazim. He probably won’t be any good to be around though. He gets cranky.”

“You see this?” Kadar said with a hand motion out toward the sight. “Look at what you’ve done to your son. Look at that—stop. Just stop looking, you are grossing me out. Go, go away and fuck your geriatric boyfriend.”

“I’m thirty two,” Altair said from across the lawn. 

“That is two years short of twice my age.” He was nice enough to take Tazim when Altair brought him over. “Bye,” his brother said to him.

\--

Malik followed him back to his house. “I have to shower and call my sons but then I am all yours. There’s probably food in the kitchen if you’re interested.” He dropped his keys, wallet and other assorted pocket accumulations onto the table by the door and kicked his boots into the buckets where they belonged. 

“Probably?” Malik repeated. “Do I have time to make a meal?

“The day before the boys have to fly home? Yeah, I’d say you do.” He caught Malik by the shirt front when he tried to go past him and pulled him off balance so he fell against his chest. The idiot was smiling when Altair kissed him. Brief and wet and promising, then he pulled back because shower-phone call-then sex. “You brushed your teeth.”

“So?” Malik said. He stuck his tongue out and went to the kitchen. 

Altair went to shower. 

\--

Malik did not listen into the phone call. What bits of it he caught were solely because Altair seemed incapable of remaining in the same place while talking. He went from the hallway to the kitchen to the living room and back through the kitchen to the back door. He stayed out in the yard doing lazy circles from the porch to the fence and back again while he talked. The general information he’d gotten from the call was that one of the boys (possibly Sef) was excited but scared about something. 

He was half-done eating before Altair came in and made a plate. “Everything okay?” Malik asked.

Altair made a scoffing-disgruntled-noise. “As okay as it can possibly be the day before the boys leave their Mom. You’d think it’d get easier for them with practice but you would be wrong.” He dropped his plate on the table and sat down like a great sack of bricks dropping. “Thank you for the food.”

“No problem,” Malik said. “I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do when Tazim is old enough to care about where his mother is.”

“You said she was in school?”

“Yeah. I have full custody of him though. She didn’t want him and still doesn’t. How do you explain that?”

Altair chewed over that question (and his food) and then shrugged. “You’ll figure it out. Most of the time, the worrying over it is far worse than the actual event. Sometimes, it’s the other way around.” 

“Are you ever—bitter or angry about…” Your children? Malik couldn’t stop his mouth from asking the words in time to keep the slightly invasive, vaguely rude question from happening.

“I would be lying if I said no. I think when I was seventeen and trying to potty train Darim while learning statistics and working as an electrician’s apprentice I was absolutely furious at everything in the world. I just remember sitting in the bathroom with a text book trying to figure out the math while Darim sang to himself on the toilet and hating everything. I don’t regret my sons. I wouldn’t give them up. But, it might have been nice to just be seventeen and frivolous.”

“Potty training,” Malik said.

“Oh yes,” Altair said with an edge of doom in his voice. “It’s a dark, dark period in your life that you will never successfully forget. I look forward to watching you crack under the pressure when Tazim is old enough.” 

“I’ll just give him to you for a few months and you can give him back when it’s done.”

Altair didn’t even respond, just laughed. 

\--

They lapsed into lounging on his couch watching late evening TV and digesting. Malik left (briefly) to check on Tazim and was shooed away from his own house by his brother who insisted interrupting parents made the whole process harder. (It was true.) 

“So,” Altair said on a commercial break, “once we successfully get your whale cock in me, I’m going to want to keep it there a while.”

“Everything you have said and done up to his moment leads me to question the sincerity of that statement,” Malik said. “I haven’t had a great deal of difficulty getting it in, you know, ever before.”

“These people that you slept with, did they know about your eleven inch monster dick before you slept with them? Because if they did, they were most likely the sort of people that liked that kind of thing. In which case, you could stick a traffic cone up their ass without difficulty.” And Altair would know because he’d seen the pornographic proof of it. (And couldn’t even be aroused but horrified.)

“Every time you make a snide remark about my penis, I’m going to make one about your age. Let’s go to bed, dear, should I get your cane for you?”

Altair smiled and Malik managed to keep that disdainful scowl on his face. Then he got up and turned off the TV. “I think I can manage this time. Come on.”

\--

There were possibly less seductive methods of going about having sex. Malik was too interested in finally getting to fuck Altair to worry over the matter-of-factness of the act. He hadn’t ever dated anyone with kids, anyone more than two years older or younger than him or anyone that had a dick phobia. So he was willing to do whatever it took (literally) to make sex happen. Even if that meant stripping naked and feeling ever so vaguely ridiculous about it as Altair rooted around in his stuff for lube. 

“You brought your own condoms right?”

“Yes.” Malik dropped them on the bedside table and sat on the bed. He was shamefully hard considering how uninteresting and alluring the whole proceeding had been up to this point. “What exactly was your plan?”

“Remember Tuesday? Very much like that but with the addition of your dick at some point.” He found his lube and put it with the condoms and looked down at Malik’s stiff dick with a faintly amused raise of his eyebrows. “God bless the young.” Then he pushed Malik backward so he was laying on the bed and crawled up after him. Malik pushed him flat and kissed him and Altair wiggled all nice and close and eager against him. 

\--

The thing about Malik that Altair liked very much was that he was young enough not to overly-confident but he was practiced enough to have some idea of what to do. And he was smart enough to figure out non-verbal cues and toppish enough to use his increasing knowledge of Altair’s likes against him. 

And that was how he ended up moaning helplessly while Malik’s fingers worked him open and his deliciously-warm-mouth worked him over. Some foggy, distant, unhurried part of his brain was reminding him that he had a goal in mind. But the immediacy of pleasure was far more important to him.

Then Malik bit him just above his hipbone and surged back up to kiss him with his mouth tasting like dick. His mammoth cock was rubbing against Altair’s belly as his fingers slid free and the unhappy emptiness they left behind required immediate attention. 

“Let me turn over,” Altair said.

“Really?” Malik’s adorable face kind of blushed as soon as he said it. “I meant—I just was expecting you to want on top. I heard it’s easier on top.”

Altair kissed him because he was cute as hell. “Yes really.” He rolled over onto his hands and knees while Malik got a condom and the lube. Altair looked over his shoulder at the look of absolute concentration on Malik’s face as he dribbled more of the lube on Altair’s ass and smeared it around his hole and inside. His giant dick was bobbing happily between his legs—looking much scarier now than before—as he moved forward on his knees. Altair reached back and grabbed his hip to pull him forward. “You can do this.”

“I know I can, I’m worried about you,” Malik said. He had one slippery hand on Altair’s hip and the other holding his dick in place as he started pushing in. (Maria’s suggestion about getting tipsy might not have been such a terrible one, in hind-sight.) 

\--

Malik was half-way in when Altair gasped, “oh fuck,” and all but collapsed against the bed. “How much fucking more is there?”

“Uh,” Malik said. He was expecting it to dissolve into more of the same but not for Altair to balance his weight on his shoulder and reach back with both hands to forcibly drag Malik closer. His dick pushed into the clenching-heat of Altair’s body in one tight slide and Altair moaned a curse. “Oh shit,” Malik said back. 

“Fuck,” Altair said. He got one elbow back under himself to lift his chest off the bed and then seemed to decide that was stupid and collapsed back against the bed. Every motion of his body was an even tighter clench around Malik. All the muscles of his back were flinching and there was a fine sheen of sweat all over his body. His hole was stretched out all pink-and-red around Malik’s dick. “Fuck,” Altair said again. He turned his head so he could see Malik. “Did you stall out?”

“You’re really tight,” he said.

Altair smiled and reached a hand back to pinch at his nipple. “That’s because I avoid dicks like yours.” His fingers dropped down to feel the obscene stretch of his body around Malik’s dick and he seemed pretty impressed going by his eyebrows. “Whenever you’re ready.”

\--

As predicted, Altair spent the majority of the time Malik fucked him trying to find a reliable handhold in the slippery sheets on his bed. It was an encompassing feeling, being fucked by something that large, and while it was a powerful, delicious, (slightly painful) pleasure it was also a thought-breath-basic-motor-function-stealing sensation. 

“Oh fuck,” he said with one of his forearms braced against the headboard and Malik’s hands petting his back as he thrust back into him. “Oh fuck,” he said because he literally could not think of anything else.

“Good oh fuck or bad oh fuck?” Malik asked. Either way it didn’t seem to be slowing him down but making his thrust shorter and faster, driving his monstrous dick inside of Altair’s body as deep as he could manage. 

“Good,” Altair bothered to reassure him. He started stroking his own throbbing dick because Malik seemed to forget he even had one, and gave up the pretense of keeping himself upright. It was Malik’s hands on his hips keeping them up so he could fuck into him with ease. “Faster,” he said in the next breath, “just,” he took his hand off his dick and reached back to pull Malik closer so he was at a better angle and said, “yeah, faster.” Then he was stroking his dick again and Malik was moaning in answer to his own breathless noises. “Fuck. Yes. Good. Keep doing that.”

\--

“That was good,” Malik said after he’d caught his breath. He was on his back and Altair was spread out on his stomach, face half buried in a pillow and arms flopped uselessly upward for the long stretch of his body. His lips twitched as an answer to that statement but otherwise he seemed to be doing an excellent impersonation of an inanimate object. “Probably would not know about your aversion to above average penis if you hadn’t told me about it.”

Altair made a low-grunting sound as an answer. Then he waved his arm in his direction, groped around his face until he managed to cover Malik’s mouth. “Shhh,” he said. “I’m trying to reorganize my internal organs. Stop talking.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Malik said from behind his hand. 

\--

Altair managed to drag himself out of bed in search of post-good-fuck food and discovered chips he didn’t remember buying and a can of chocolate sauce that he did. The salt-and-chocolate combination was a vice that he’d picked up from Maria when she was pregnant with Sef. Malik didn’t give him shit about it though (and that was nice) but he declined to join him in drizzling the chocolate on the chips and eating them while they sat ninety percent naked on the couch and watched whatever nonsense TV was on. 

At least, Altair was watching it. Malik was just looking at him.

“What?”

“Didn’t you say something about fucking more than once?” Malik said.

“I’m eating,” Altair said. “Do not interrupt me while I’m eating.”

So Malik patiently watched the movie. Altair finished his snack and got back up to his feet. That phantom sensation of having his ass stretched open (and then brutally fucked) made shifting positions an interesting, distracting sort of thing. He hadn’t been lying about how much he disliked having the muscle memory haunt him for hours afterward because he preferred a smaller dick that he could get off with and forget about immediately. “Now?” Malik said.

\--

Altair shoved him flat on the bed for the second round. They kissed with the pretense of laziness and none of the actual laziness. It escalated into hungry biting and grabbing almost immediately. Altair making pleasing-gasping-hungry-sounds with Malik’s fingers in his ass and his mouth sucking on his fantastic chest. 

Then there was the condom and Altair sank down on his dick with the precision and grace of a professional. He settled in place with his head tipped back and his fingertips spread out across Malik’s ribs. The most blissful expression on his face as he did literally nothing but sit still with his body clenching down around Malik’s dick. “Comfortable?” Malik asked.

Altair hummed. “I’m going to buy a silicone dick the same size as yours and I’m going to fuck you with it and ask you stupid questions while I do it.” But there was absolute no venom in his voice. He tipped his head down far enough to look at him through his half-closed eyes and a smile pulled his perfect-fucking-mouth up at the corners. “You may have noticed I like having things in my ass. I just prefer something more average.” 

Malik was going to say something back to him but the phone on the bedside table started ringing and Altair leaned forward to grab it. He straightened back up, body sliding back down to fully envelope Malik’s cock as he frowned at his phone. “Sorry I have to get this,” Altair said with such rationality it was mind boggling. Then he answered the phone, “hello?”

The sound of a child’s voice through the phone made Malik cringe. It sounded like Sef. Sef was on the phone and his father was sitting on Malik’s dick and there was something definitely, world-shatteringly-wrong with that. And yet Altair was just sitting there, nodding at the phone like it could understand his nodding. 

“It’s alright,” Altair told him. “I don’t mind you calling me. But your Mother is there, Sef and I think she would really like it if you could tell her everything you’re saying to me.” Then he was quiet as the sound of Sef’s worried voice drifted from his phone. 

If Malik were capable of shriveling up and dying he might have done it. 

“Sef,” Altair interrupted. “I think you need to talk to your Mother about this. She needs to know and it will help you feel better.” Then more denials from the phone and Altair had the gall to look vaguely bored with the predictability of his son’s rambling. “I know. But she’s there and she really wants you to talk to her.” Then his smile twitched up at the corners. “I love you kid. Try to get some sleep tonight, you have a flight tomorrow. Does Darim need to talk?” Sef was quiet a moment and then back again with an apparent rejection. Altair told him good bye and that he’d see him tomorrow before hanging up. “You are blushing,” Altair said.

“That was your son.”

Altair snorted. “I sang Sef a lullaby over the phone while I was having sex once. Kids don’t care about personal space. And it wasn’t like we were actually doing anything.”

“My dick is in your ass that counts as actually doing anything. My dick was in your ass and you were talking to your child,” Malik said again.

“I didn’t want to have to go through the trouble of getting it back in there.” And Altair _grinned_ like he was so fucking clever. “That’s cute how you are so offended right now. Just wait. You’ll understand.” Malik had a very good comeback in mind but that was before Altair started moving (without warning) and then his brain just sort of dissolved into a puddle in the center of his skull.

\--

Altair slept in long past any decent time for a good wholesome person to be awake. The alarm on his phone alerted him at ten in the morning and he stretched and hit the snooze on it. The space to his right where Malik had been sleeping the night before had gone cold and there was a message on his phone to let him know that Kadar had called whining about needing his freedom. 

Having nothing else to do, Altair promptly went back to sleep.

It was almost one in the afternoon when he woke up again. He took a shower, found something to eat and checked his phone for any last minute panicked messages from his sons or Maria. There was nothing (yet) so he decided to go for a run. Malik was outside with Tazim, sitting on the grass looking sleepy but animated with interest about the blade of grass Tazim was showing him. 

“Looks like nap time,” Altair said from his driveway.

Malik made an ambivalent face at the suggestion. “Kadar said he was asleep until nine-thirty. I’ll be lucky if he naps at all. Are you going to get your boys?”

“No. Not until later. I’m going for a run.”

“A run.”

“Yes,” Altair assured him. 

“Is this a thing you do recreationally often? I don’t think I’ve seen you go running since I got here.”

“That’s because I was busy trying to get into your pants,” Altair said. “Mission accomplished, now I have to show how virile I am by running for fun. Sef will go running with me but Darim complains the whole time.” He did a few simple stretches while he spoke. “You’re welcome to join me.”

“I don’t think Tazim could keep up,” Malik said. He flopped backward into the grass as if he could not force himself to remain upright any longer. Tazim shrieked happily and threw himself across Malik’s chest. His bare feet were dirty on the bottom and his hair was full of plucked blades of grass. “Leave me here to die.”

“Big baby,” Altair said. “I’ll buy you one of those jogging strollers and you’ll have no excuse.” Malik growled as an answer. “I’ll see you when I get back.”

Altair was gone for thirty minutes, came back with a healthy sweat and a feeling of optimism about his sons returning to him. (That feeling, he was aware, would be dashed to pieces the exact second Darim dragged Sef up to him and threw his little brother at him with the infuriated look of recent separation anxiety.) Malik was still in his front yard, still lying in his grass with Tazim sitting cross legged on his chest. Tazim was watching his father whistle with his tongue between his lips and a terrible, spit-filled attempt to copy him. Altair walked over to him, stood where his shadow blocked the sunlight from Malik’s face. “I thought you were the young one. Look at you.”

“Leave me here to die.”

“Your son is eating dirt.”

“It’s good for him.”

“Tazim,” Altair said. “Tell your Dad to get up.”

Tazim turned and babbled an incomprehensible reproach at his father. Malik stuck his tongue out at him. “Want to come over for—food? What time is it?”

“Almost two. I feel obligated as an older, wiser, obviously better able to recover from late night sexual encounters person to help you in this time of great need.”

“My brother called me at eight thirty and I tried to ignore him but I never got back to sleep. You didn’t get out of your house until like one thirty. That’s not better able to recover, that’s just sleep. I want sleep.” Malik set Tazim to the side and sat up, got up to his feet while he was talking and dusted the dirt off his shirt. He looked terribly tired as he reached down to pick Tazim up. 

\--

Malik had passed exhaustion a few hours ago and was only still awake because of the biological imperative to protect his child. That must have been the reason he fell asleep on his couch as soon as he made the mistake of sitting down. Altair was there, sitting on the floor with Tazim and his puzzles. He did not mean to fall asleep, he definitely did not mean to sleep long enough for the sun to make significant progress through the sky and yet he woke up to the smell of food and the absence of his boyfriend and child. 

After lurching to his feet and spending a moment in fruitless disorientation, Malik went toward the dining room that was basically part of the kitchen and found Altair talking to Tazim about the difference between peas and carrots. 

“Why did you let me sleep?” Malik said. He went over to stand behind Altair’s chair (angled toward Tazim) and leaned forward across his shoulder to kiss him. “How long have I been sleeping?”

“A couple hours,” Altair said. “I was going to wake you up soon because I’ve got to leave to get the boys. You didn’t miss much. Tazim showed me all the books in his room, pulled all of his toys out of their boxes and lined up every car he owned from one end of the room to the other. I wouldn’t walk in there without turning the light on first. Then we made dinner.”

Well. At least there was a mess to clean up or there might not be proof that he’d done anything useful all day. “Well, I owe you one then. I’d offer to babysit but I think I’m out of my depth with yours.”

Altair snorted softly. “Sef would be alright. Darim doesn’t need a babysitter but he might appreciate not having to look after his kid brother once in a while. I don’t mind helping,” Altair said.

“I don’t mind help,” Malik said from the kitchen where he was making a plate. He came back out and pulled a chair up next to Tazim’s. “So, when should I reasonably expect to see you again?”

“Whenever you want,” Altair said. “The boys won’t be gracious but you’re more than welcome to come over whenever you feel like risking your life.” He smiled all quick-and-sly.

“Well, you’re my sole source of sex at this point so I’m sure at some point my sex drive will override my survival instinct.” 

Altair laughed. “That will have to happen at your house for the time being. After dark, in your bedroom where my precious little sons will not be scarred for life. Darim has it figured out but Sef’s still unclear on the concept.”

“The concept of sex?”

“The concept of gay sex,” Altair corrected. “He knows I prefer men but since I don’t date and it honestly hasn’t occurred to him that I don’t go bowling when I leave the house for ‘adult time’ I don’t think he’s had the occasion to care about it too much. Besides which, you are not ready for the walk of shame that takes you past my sons’ bedrooms.”

“No. I’m not. I’m still upset that you answered the phone and had a whole conversation like that. I may never be able to look at your child again.”

Altair laughed again. “Oh, you have so much to learn. I am going to enjoy watching you lose your sense of shame.” 

“Won’t he figure out why you’re coming over to my house?” Malik asked.

“Darim will tell him. That’s not the important part. The important part is the inevitable moment when he wakes up and hears the bed thumping against the wall or one of us making noise and then has to talk about it for a week.”

“We are never having sex at your house,” Malik said. 

Altair just laughed again. 

\--

It was after dark before Altair’s exhausted, jet-lagged, angry-frowning sons returned to him. Darim was carrying both of their bags with one hand on Sef’s back pushing him forward as his baby brother whined pitifully and dragged his feet. As predicted, Darim shoved him forward so he stumbled the last few steps and knocked into Altair with the grace of a pinball. Sef wrapped his skinny arms around him in a loose hug. 

“Glad to be back?” Altair asked.

Darim pulled his headphones out of a pocket on his bag. “Depends on whether you’re still embarrassing yourself by dating the neighbor.”

It would have been worse. He could have asked if he were still boning him. “I take great pride in ruining your life,” Altair assured him. He hooked his arm around Sef’s thin shoulders and pulled him forward toward where they claimed their baggage. They made it through that with almost no comment and all the way out to the vehicle without either of the boys offering him any details about their stay.

“Can I call Mom?” Sef asked when they finished shoving the suitcases into the trunk. Altair handed him the phone (because his sons were nothing if not predictable) and Sef climbed into the backseat while dialing his Mom’s number. 

Darim hovered at the trunk for a moment and then sighed, “Dad,” he said.

“What?” Altair asked. He leaned his elbow against the trunk of the car.

“You’re gross and embarrassing.” Yes, well what could one do? “But Mom was talking about when you were my age and how Grandma made you get a job and all. Mom said she always made you change the smelly diapers and how she slept at her friend’s house when she had big tests.” This was clearly leading to something. “I’m not saying I’m going to suddenly agree with you all the time or anything—you are completely unreasonable _all the time_ and I’m _fifteen_ , I should be able to have a friend over without a chaperone but—I didn’t realize what it was like for you before. I mean, I knew you were like my age when I was born but. Anyway. I love you.”

Altair grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him close enough to hug. Darim tolerated it and then wrapped his arms around him and hugged him back. He was tall-as-hell now, almost as tall as Altair. “I love you too,” he said.

“Enough to stop boning the neighbor?”

Altair sighed. 

“I don’t want another baby I have to watch all the time is what I’m saying.”

Altair sighed louder.

“Plus it’s gross.”

At which point Altair shoved his son toward his own side of the car. “We have to go home, I have a date to go bone the neighbor and I need you to babysit his kid.” 

Darim smiled with a faint laugh and got into the car. Sef was inside telling his Mom all about the plane ride and how his idiot brother and father were just standing in a parking garage talking or something. Darim rolled his eyes and dug his phone out to listen to music, play games or inform everyone in the city that he’d returned (possibly all of those things). He stopped just short of fixing the ear bud in place and said, “you were kidding, right?”

“This time.”

\--

Malik had no intention of bother the Ibn-La’Ahad household on Sunday but then Sef came outside looking decidedly less than thrilled to be back (and be heading back to school the next day) and Tazim (who cared very little about people’s bad days) went charging across the yards toward him. Darim (also looking more tired and hassled than average) was right behind Sef and Tazim let out a shrieking war cry as soon as he saw him.

“I don’t know why he likes you so much,” Sef said to Darim.

“Hey kid,” Darim said to Tazim. He sat in the porch swing and Tazim crawled into his lap and threw his arms around his neck. “I don’t know either. If I could give him to you I would.”

Altair came out last, keys in hand and stopped midway through locking the door to take note of the addition. “You’ve got something there,” Altair said.

“I noticed.” Darim pushed Tazim far enough away to look at his face. “You want pizza? We’re going to get pizza.”

Sef turned to look at Malik—looked surly as he sized up the possibility of including another person in this engagement—and said, “there’s a pizza buffet we go to. It has one hundred and three different types of pizza and pasta.”

“All you can eat breadsticks,” Darim added. He stood up and Tazim retained his death grip on Darim’s neck as he put his dirty shoes against Darim’s stomach and tried to climb to higher ground. Altair put an arm around his middle and pulled him off. 

“Sounds diverse,” Malik said.

“Are you going?” Darim asked him. 

Altair brought Tazim back over to him and Malik looked up at him rather than at the two boys who looked equal parts offended at his existence and eager for his company. Malik whispered, “I’m not sure what the right answer is?”

Altair shrugged. “They’ve never asked anyone else to go ever.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Sef said.

“That means you have to,” Altair said very quietly.

“Let me get his seat and my wallet,” Malik said. “I’ll go.” He turned to go but Altair caught him by the arm and pulled him back and kissed him. It was a perfectly chaste little kiss to share in front of the scandalized assemblage of their sons. Darim made a gagging noise and Sef’s eyes went super wide and Tazim just dropped his head back and reached over toward Darim. 

It was another five minutes before they managed to all get in Altair’s car. As soon as everyone was buckled and the car was started Darim was leaning forward into the space between the seats, “what is Kadar doing? You think he’d want to come over when we get home?”

“Uh,” Malik said. “Working? I think. I don’t know. He asked when you were coming back though.”

“Could you get me a job?” Darim asked. “Dad said I have to get a job before I can get a car. I’m going to be sixteen this year. I need a car.”

“Maybe,” Malik said. “I’ll talk to my Dad. It’d probably be a cashier job.”

“I don’t care as long as it pays money,” Darim said. He sat back in his seat. 

“You can’t have a job,” Sef said. “What am I going to do all summer? I don’t want to go to work with Dad again. That was boring.”

Altair sighed. 

“You can go to daycare,” Darim said, “like other little kids.” The conversation devolved from there and Altair reached up to turn the music up until it was nearly deafening and the boys went quiet (after realizing they couldn’t shout any louder). Then Altair turned it back down.

He said, “we’ve got a couple of months before summer gets here. Sef, your brother can get a job. You will have the opportunity to make your own plans, as always. Tazim,” he said, “you can come to work with me. You’re the only good one left.”

And Tazim just grinned.

“You’re not taking my kid to construction sites,” Malik said quietly.

Altair smiled sideways at him. “You don’t think he’d like it? All those power tools? Rusty nails and debris everywhere? I bet he’d love playing in the dumpster.”

“I will dump you right now,” Malik said.

“If I went to work with you,” Sef said (as a purely theoretical scenario), “would you actually let me do anything this year? I’m nine now. I’m a lot bigger than I was when I was seven.”

“Maybe,” Altair said. 

\--

They survived the pizza buffet, arrived home, parted ways with Malik and his adorable son and went inside. Sef went to his room (to do stuff) and Darim called Kadar to see if he’d come over to play games for a while. 

Within the hour, Kadar and Darim were monopolizing the TV and Sef was fast asleep on his bed. Altair (having nothing else to do) left the boys with a stern warning about junk food and impregnation. Malik was cleaning up his kitchen when Altair let himself in. Tazim was asleep (if the sound of lullabies coming from his room was a good indication). 

“Hey,” Malik said.

Altair said, “hey” and then kissed him. “They’re all boring at my place.”

“Yeah, I was thinking about how much I wanted to have sex too,” Malik said. Then he grabbed Altair by the hand and dragged him back to the bedroom.


End file.
